PASSIVE AND ACTIVE MARGIN HISTORY OF THE NORTHERN TATRICUM (WESTERN CARPATHIANS, SLOVAKIA)

The Tatricum, an upper crustal thrust sheet of the Central Western Car pathians, comprises pre-Alpine crystalline basement and a Late Paleozo ic-Mesozoic sedimentary cover. The sedimentary record indicates gradua l subsidence during the Triassic, Early Jurassic initial rifting, a Ju rassic-Early Cretaceous extensional tectonic regime with episodic rift ing events and thermal subsidence periods, and Middle Cretaceous overa ll flexural subsidence in front of the orogenic wedge prograding from the hinterland. Passive rifting led to the separation of the Central C arpathian realm from the North European Platform. A passive margin, ri mmed by peripheral half-graben, was formed along the northern Tatric e dge, facing the Vahic (South Penninic) oceanic domain. The passive ver sus active margin inversion occurred during the Senonian, when the Vah ic ocean began to be consumed southwards below the Tatricum. It is arg ued that passive to active margin conversion is an integral part of th e general shortening polarity of the Western Carpathians during the Me sozoic that lacks features of an independent Wilson cycle. An attempt is presented to explain all the crustal deformation by one principal d riving force - the south-eastward slab pull generated by the subductio n of the Meliatic (Triassic-Jurassic Tethys) oceanic lithosphere follo wed by the subcrustal subduction of the continental mantle lithosphere .