Chapter from:
AAPG Memoir 68:Regional and Petroleum Geology of the Black Sea and Surrounding Region, Edited by A.G. Robinson
AAPG Memoir 68: Regional and Petroleum Geology of the Black Sea and Surrounding Region. Chapter 5: Mesozoic Strike-Slip Back-Arc Basins of the Western Black Sea Region, by Chris J. Banks and Andrew G. Robinson, Pages 53-62

Chapter 5
Mesozoic Strike-Slip Back-Arc Basins of the Western Black Sea Region

Chris J. Banks
Royal Holloway University of London
Egham, Surrey, United Kingdom

Andrew G. Robinson
JKX Oil & Gas plc
Guildford, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

This chapter presents schematic reconstructions of the Black Sea region in Triassic to Cretaceous time. The tectonic evolution of the region during this time was controlled by the northward subduction of the Tethys oceanic plate. The ocean is now closed at a suture extending from Romania to the Aegean and through the whole length of northern Turkey to Iran. The overriding European plate was alternately subjected to extensional and compressive deformation and arc magmatism, resulting in a zone of considerable structural and stratigraphic complexity. The present Western Black Sea opened in the mid-Cretaceous as the microplate comprising what is now the Western and Central Pontides separated from the Moesian and Scythian platforms and moved southeast to leave an oceanic back-arc basin behind it. We identify two regional strike-slip transfer fault zones that constrained the movement of the Pontide microplate. Our restoration enables us to recognize the Peceneaga-Camena fault and its extensions as a key tectonic feature--another major transfer fault--in the earlier Triassic and Jurassic events. We suggest that its displacement was sinistral in the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic, with Moesia moving southeast, leaving an oceanic embayment now occupied by the Pannonian Basin. This phase was generally transtensional, opening a string of back-arc basins in the Black Sea area, which then closed in the Middle-Late Jurassic Cimmeride orogeny.