Pannonium

The Pannonian (also Pannonia or shortened to Pannon ) is a regional chronostratigraphic stage of the Miocene ( Neogene ) in the central Paratethys area. Today it is correlated with the international chronostratigraphic degree of the tortonium . This means that it is roughly in the period from 11.608 (± 0.005) million to 7.246 (± 0.005) million years. In the central Paratethys, the regional stage of the pannonium is followed by the regional stage of the pontium ; it lies on the Sarmatium .

Naming and stratotype

The Pannon was prepared according to this typical sediment - layers of Pannonien ( Pannonische or Hungarian Plain named). The name was introduced into scientific literature by Karl Roth von Telegd in 1879. The stratotype (= type profile) is located near Vösendorf ( Lower Austria ).

definition

The upper and lower limits are now correlated with the upper and lower limits of the international stage of tortonium .

Breakdown

Officially the Pannonium is in the lower grades

Serbium (upper Pannonian) (Stevanovic 1955)
Slavonian (lower Pannonian) (Andrusov 1923)

divided.

Tectonic situation at the time of the Pannonian

Map of Lake Pannon 11.5 million years ago.

During this time the alpine orogeny slowly came to an end, during which the Paratethys slowly withdrew and silted up from the Vienna Basin over the Pannonian Plain to the Black Sea . The climate was still warm (before the Quaternary Ice Ages). The rest of this arm of the sea, which has existed in Central Europe as a brackish to freshwater lake since the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea in the Cretaceous period , is also called Pannonian Sea or Lake Pannon (around 10–5 million years ago, Pannonium / Maeotium to Dacium ). In the tectonic subsidence area between the Alps and the Carpathians, sediments up to 1500 m thick ( Wiener Tegel , sand and gravel ) have settled in it.

sedimentation

The Pannonian sediments were deposited as the uppermost of the 8 km thick Miocene layers from the remaining sea surfaces when Central and Eastern Europe finally silted up after the displacement and folding of the Alps and Carpathians . At the same time, large areas sank by a few mm / year - i.e. by around 1000 meters per million years.

The Pannon is therefore a striking step in and other tertiary sedimentary basins ( Vienna Basin , eastern Styria , Molasse zone in the foothills of the Alps to the Swiss plateau ). The key fossils in the brackish water of some basins at that time are mussels ( Congeria and Limnocardium ) and freshwater snails . They can be found in various regions up to Northern Europe and the Middle East ; from them z. B. the Melanopsidae also recently (in the present). In Germany, deposits of the Pannon can only be found in Bavaria (above all Lower Bavaria and on the edge of the Alb ) and in the Lower Rhine Bay .

Economic importance of the Pannonian deposits

The Pannon is economically significant above all through

the clay marl of the middle Pannon as raw material for the brick industry (e.g. Wienerberger ), and
Oil and gas deposits, which are also found in the deeper layers of the Miocene. For Hungary and neighboring regions are also
hard rocks of the Pannonian basalt volcanism are important.

literature

Adolf Papp, Á Jámbor and Fritz F. Steininger (eds.): Chronostratigraphy and Neostratotypes Miocene of the central Paratethys. Volume VII M ₆ Pannonia (Slavonia and Serbia). 636 pp., Publishing House of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Budapest 1985.
Karl Roth von Telegd: Geological sketch of the Kroisbach-Rust mountain range and the southern part of the Leitha Mountains. Foldt. Közlöni 9, Budapest 1879.
Commission for the paleontological and stratigraphic research of Austria of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Ed.): The Stratigraphic Table of Austria (sedimentary layer sequences). Vienna 2004 ( pdf , palstrat.uni-graz.at, large file!)
Hans Murawski & Wilhelm Meyer: Geological dictionary . 10., rework. u. exp. Ed., Enke Verlag, Stuttgart 1998 ISBN 3-432-84100-0 .