Genesis of the Pieniny Klippen Belt in the Carpathians: Possible effects of a major paleotransform fault in the Neo-Tethyan domain

The Pieniny Klippen Belt (PKB) is a narrow, discontinuous zone rich in olistostromes and olistoliths (Klippen) in the western Carpathians. This paper, based on prior works including tectonic and stratigraphic evidences, suggests that the PKB rocks were deposited from the Triassic to the Early Paleogene along the eastern footwall of a major Split-Karlovac-Initial PKB-Crustal-Zone (SKICZ) paleotransform fault zone. This transform fault was then separating the continental crust of the Austro-Alpine zone in the west and a Carpathian Embayment Ocean in the east. It was only during the Late Paleogene-Early Miocene that the PKB rocks were integrated into the accretionary prism that formed at the front of the eastward-extruded ALCAPA units. This interpretation therefore supports the existence of a major paleotransform fault zone in the Neo-Tethys during the Triassic-Early Paleogene. This paleotransform had been previously suggested to explain the observed reversal in obduction and subduction at the junction between the eastern-southern Alps and the Carpathians-Dinarides.