In the marginal part of the Kudowa Trough, on the border of Carboniferous granite and Permian (Saxonian) sediments, features typical for the profile of chemical weathering occurring in a regolith type sequence are described. Previously this border was interpreted as a tectonic fault. According to the authors, location of the initial cataclastic zone, followed by weathering of granite, is incidental. The extent of soil, its structural features and mineralogy are indicative of weathering in moderate-to-warm and humid climate conditions. Stratigraphic position of soil and its regional palaeogeographical and palaeoclimatic context make it possible to assume Late Westphalian (B and C, about 313-311 Ma) as the oldest, most likely beginning date of the weathering process. This opinion does not exclude the possibility of reactivation of weathering processes in Kudowa granite in the Early Cretaceous or even in the Triassic.
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The Lower Carboniferous Paprotnia beds of the Bardo Structural Unit in the central Sudetes, composed predominantly of mudstones with Upper Viséan fossils, include several bentonite layers. The bentonites, composed mainly of kaolinite, illite/smectite and smectite, with minor amounts of quartz, calcite and iron hydroxides, also contain abundant zircons, the features of which indicate their volcanic derivation. The main population of the zircons yielded a SHRIMP U-Pb age of ~ 334 Ma corresponding with, and numerically constraining, the biostratigraphic data. The field evidence, biostrati- graphic and geochronological results, together with mineralogical data from the bentonites, indicate continental margin-type sedimentation and contemporaneous volcanic (andesitic-rhyolitic) activity in the neighbouring region during the ongoing Variscan orogeny in central Europe in Late Viséan times.