Baltic-Iranian super lineament — long-lived Trans-Eurasian belt of dislocations and planetary megafractures

Abstract

Information on fault tectonics and the deep structure of the global trans-Eurasian belt of dislocations and planetary megafractures (Baltic-Iranian Super Lineament) is generalized based on the analysis of literary, geological and geophysical, cartographic, cosmographic materials, including the results of tectonic lineaments interpretation of cosmo-images of the Earth’s surface. The features of its distribution and segmentation are clarified. This Super Lineament is the trans-Eurasian structure of a planetary rank — an integral part of the regularly spatially oriented ancient reghmatic fault net of Eurasia, formed at the early stages of the formation of the rigid earth crust under the influence of global stresses associated with the factor of rotation of the Earth. The long-lived nature of the belt (the Upper Proterozoic — Cenozoic) and its quasi-stationary position throughout its formation history, as well as the absence of large-scale, hundreds of kilometers, of shear displacements along it and at intersections with transverse tectolineament belts of a similar rank indicate the low probability of the plate-tectonic convergence model of Afro-Arabia and Eurasia. The destruction model of the once united Afro-Eurasian continent in a potentially shear field of relatively low amplitude (on a planetary scale) dislocations is preferable. The geodynamic mode of formation and development of the belt as a whole cannot be described by any one type — riftogenic, or collisional ones. Regional and supra-regional zones of extension (riftogenic zones) and compression (collision) alternate in it periodically. It shows the global nature of the belt, the union of different geodynamic regimes in it, as well as the wave character and hierarchy of the tectonic process.