Product Code Database
The Tornquist Sea or Tornquist Ocean was a sea located between the palaeocontinents Avalonia and Baltica about . The remains of the sea today form a suture stretching across northern Europe (Tornquist Zone).
There are faunal, palaeomagnetic, palaeogeographic, and apparent polar wander path evidence for the timing of closure for Eastern Avalonia (England, Wales and southern Ireland) and Baltica.; . Torsvik et al. 1993 proposed a "pre-Wenlock (Early Silurian) collision" but (e.g.) Torsvik & Rehnström 2003 modified the timing to Late Ordovician.
The Baltica-Avalonia collision also resulted in that the Rheic Ocean ceased to expand south of Avalonia around 450 Ma, in huge magmatism in Avalonia, gigantic ash fall in Baltica, and metamorphism in present-day northern Germany.
Where Baltica and Avalonia finally collided is now a suture known as the Teisseyre-Tornquist Line or Zone; named after its discoverers, Polish geologist Wawrzyniec Teisseyre and German geologist Alexander Tornquist. This lineament still marks the transition between, on one hand, the East and North European Pre-Cambrian Craton and, on the other hand, the West European and Mediterranean Palaeozoic Orogenes. It is part of a wider deformation zone running across Europe, from the British Isles to the Black Sea, known as the Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ).; Tornquist erroneously identified as a "Swedish magnetologist"
|
|
