Geo log i cal Quar terly, 2017, 61 (4): 697–722 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7306/gq.1359 The po si tion and age of flysch de pos its in the Cri mea Moun tains (South ern Ukraine) Nestor OSZCZYPKO1, *, Andrzej ŚLĄCZKA1, Ihor BUBNIAK2, Barbara OLSZEWSKA3 and Małgorzata GARECKA3 1 Jagiellonian Uni ver sity, In sti tute of Geo log i cal Sci ences, Gronostajowa 3a, 30-001 Kraków, Po land 2 Ivan Franko Na tional Uni ver sity of Lviv, Geo log ical Fac ulty, Hrushevsky 4, Lviv 79005, Ukraine 3 Pol ish Geo log i cal In sti tute – Na tional Re search In sti tute, Skrzatów 1, 31-560 Kraków, Po land Oszczypko, N., Ślączka, A., Bubniak, I., Olszewska, B., Garecka, M., 2017. The po si tion and age of flysch de pos its in the Cri- mean Moun tains (South ern Ukraine). Geo log i cal Quar terly, 61 (4): 697–722, doi: 10.7306/gq.1359 The Cri mean Moun tains (CM) are regarded as part of the Al pine-Himalaya orogenic belt related to the col li sion of the Eur- asian and Af ri can plates. Our research in the CM has al lowed con firm ing the ex is tence of at least two flysch for ma tions of dif fer ent ages: the Taurida Flysch For ma tion (Up per Tri as sic/Lower–? Mid dle Ju ras sic) and the Sudak For ma tion (up per- most Ju ras sic/Lower Cre ta ceous) in the western and east ern sec tors of the CM, re spec tively. Af ter the Mid dle Ju ras sic vol- ca nism, the fresh wa ter claystones with coal-bear ing in ter ca la tions, as well as lo cal al lu vial fan con glom er ates were de pos ited. Then, fol low ing the Oxfordian/Kimmeridgian ma rine trans gres sion, three sepa rated Tithonian/Berriasian car bon - ate plat forms de vel oped: Baydarska, Chatyr-Dag and Demerji/Karabi. At the turn of the Late Ju ras sic, the deep-water Sudak Ba sin (east ern sec tor of the CM) began to de velop in the east ern pe riph ery of the Demerji/Karabi car bon ate plat form. This ba sin, dom i nated by turbiditic de po si tion, was prob a bly con nected with the Great Cau ca sus sed i men tary sys tem. Fi nally, dis tal flysch sed i men ta tion in the Sudak Basin was fol lowed by de bris-flow de pos its, with huge blocks of Up per Ju ras sic lime- stones. These blocks were derived from de struc tion of the Karabi car bon ate plat form. Dur ing the Berriasian/Valanginian, the east ern sec tor of the CM began to sub side. As a result, both carbon ate plat forms (western CM) and the de bris flow fans of the Sudak Ba sin (east ern CM) were over lain by marly shales and/or dis tal turbidites. This type of de po si tion lasted un til the Aptian/Albian. In the post-Albian pe riod, the Alushta-Salgir tec tonic zone was trans formed into a SE-dip ping thrust fault with at least 10 km am pli tude of overthrusting. Key words: Ukraine, Cri mean Mts., stra tig ra phy, micropalaeontology, flysch. INTRODUCTION Tak ing into ac count our ex pe ri ence in study ing the Outer Carpathians flysch, we be came in ter ested in the ex pla na tion of the con tro versy re lated to the Tauric Flysch. With this in mind, Flysch sed i ments, known al ready for more than 150 years we have con ducted our stud ies in the years 2010–2013, dur ing (from Dubois de Montpereaux, 1837), play an im por tant role in the three short, but in tense field work campaings. Our in ter est the geo log i cal struc ture of the Cri mean Mts. These de pos its has been fo cused on the fol low ing main ques tions: were tra di tion ally re garded as the Tauric Flysch of Late Tri as- – litho- and biostratigraphic stud ies of the Tauric Flysch; sic/Early Ju ras sic age (Muratov et al., 1969; Muratov, 1972). – its re la tion ships to over ly ing lithostratigraphic units; This age has been chal lenged by Popadyuk and Smirnov – lat eral and lon gi tu di nal spatial vari abil ity of the Tauric (1991), who con cluded Early Cre ta ceous age. This sparked a Flysch, es pe cially along the west-east di rec tion. lively dis cus sion (e.g., Popadyuk et al., 2010, 2013a, b, 2014; We started from the lo cus typicus of the Tauric Flysch: the Oszczypko et al., 2012b, c) un til Sheremet et al. (2014, 2016a), Alma and Bodrak val leys and along the Black Sea coast, be - on the ba sis of cal car e ous nannoplanton anal y ses of flysch-like tween the Cape of Sarych in the west and the vil lage of de pos its in the east ern sec tor of the CM, in cluded both the Rybache in the east (Oszczypko et al., 2012b, c). Then, we tried Tauric For ma tion and the Lower Cre ta ceous flysch de pos its of to rec og nize the re la tion ship be tween the Tauric Flysch and the the east ern sec tor of the Cri mea into the Tauric Group. Ju ras sic?/Early Cre ta ceous flysch of the east ern sec tor of the CM (Oszczypko et al., 2012c). In Rus sian pub li ca tions, the Me so zoic flysch is known as the Tavricheskaya svita, se ries, group or sim ply Taurica. We sug - gest in tro duc ing a new term – the Taurida Flysch For ma tion * Corresponding author, e-mail: [email protected] (TFF), which is more con sis tent with the for mal litho stra ti graphic Received: July 20, 2016; accepted: March 16, 2017; first published stan dards, rec om mend ing a geo graph ical noun. In this case it online: May 10, 2017 will be the Taurida – an an cient Greek name of the Crimean Peninsula. 698 Nestor Oszczypko, Andrzej Ślączka, Ihor Bubniak, Barbara Olszewska and Małgorzata Garecka GEOLOGICAL SETTING First de tailed in for ma tion on tec tonic de for ma tions of the Tauric and Eski-Orda se ries, in the Bodrak Val ley, was given by Koronovsky and Mileev (1974). These au thors de scribed in The Cri mean Mts. are part of the south ern, de formed places the highly de formed com plex, with south-vergent fold - bound ary of the East Eu ro pean Plat form, lo cated be tween the ing and thrust ing, re lated to the Early Cim mer ian phase. An in - Scythian Plate (which be longs to the Eur asian con ti nent) and ter est ing view on the struc tural evo lu tion of the Cri mean the Black Sea (Figs. 1 and 2). This moun tain chain is ~50 km orogen was pre sented by Kruglov and Tsypko (1988), who wide and ~150 km long (Figs. 3 and 4; cf. Ap pen dix 1*). It is high lighted two Cim mer ian orogenic phases: the older (Li- arch-shaped, with E–W struc tural trends in the west, and assic/Bathonian) one in the NW sector of the CM, and the NE–SW in the east. Tra di tion ally, the CM are re garded as the youn ger (Valan ginian/Hauterivian) one in the SE sector of the Cim mer ian/Al pine orogen (Muratov, 1960, 1969; Koronovsky CM. The early orogenic phase took place in the outer (exter - and Mileev, 1974; Byzova, 1980; Kruglov and Tsypko, 1988; nal) part of the ba sin, where the fold ing of TFF was pre ceded Mileev et al., 1997, 2006, 2009; Nikishin at al., 2015a, c). by pre-fold ing vol ca nism. This is well-doc u mented (Kruglov Fig. 1. Struc tural sketch-map of the Al pine Orogen Sys tem of SE Eu rope and Middle East sensu lato af ter Sosson at al. (2010), sim pli fied Po si tion of the Cri mea Mts. is shown as a red rect an gle * Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi: 10.7306/gq.1359 The po si tion and age of flysch de pos its in the Cri mean Moun tains (South ern Ukraine) 699 and Tsypko, 1988) by re sults of the Kacha 2 bore - hole (40 km SW of Simferopol). This bore hole drilled to the fi nal depth of 4032 m re vealed in - tensely folded sed i ments TFF (T3-J1) with nu mer - ous in tru sions (dykes, sills and pil low lavas of diabases, picritic diabases, andesites and ba - salt-andesites) in the 2270–3930 m depth in ter - val. Hurskiy and Kruglov (2007) dis tin guished the fol low ing stru c tural com plexes: – autochthonous (Aptian/Albian), fragmen - tarily pre served in the Salgir and Tonas val- leys; – allo chtho nous com plex with two nappes: lower – the Tauric Nappe, and up per – the Yayla Nappe (car bon ate plat forms); – Ceno manian/Eocene post-nappe com plex (Fig. 2).