Black Sea Morphotectonic Nature

Abstract The presence of oceanic crust on the Black Sea bottom indicates that this sea basin was a section - a Pontic Ocean gulf at the northern margin of the Phanerozoic Tethys Ocean. The late Phanerozoic subduction of the Tethys oceanic crust under the European continental massif in this area took place in the subduction zone, whose modern traces are found today south of the Crimean Peninsula. On the surface of the subducted oceanic crust were numerous fragments of the destroyed continental crust on the northern margin of the Gondwana continent. These relatively lighter than oceanic crust crustal fragments (or a significant part of them) were not subducted. They accumulate in the immediate vicinity of the subduction zone on the unsub ducted remnants of oceanic crust. Such is the case with the Black Sea. It is not an imposed subcontinental basin, but a last modern relict of the northern margin of the Late Phanerozoic Tethys Ocean.