Definition
The Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ) is the transition zone from the Precambrian East European Craton in the north and east to the younger Phanerozoic mobile belts to the south and west. It is the most prominent lithospheric tectonic feature of Europe.
The term Trans-European Suture Zone was only adapted around year 2000 during the Pan-European EUROPROBE program of the European Science Foundation. Until then, parts of the zone were termed Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone, Sorgenfrei-Tornquist Zone, Trans-European Fault, and Tornquist Fan.
Introduction
The Trans-European Suture Zone, TESZ, is associated with major geological differences, abrupt changes in crustal and lithospheric thicknesses, and major anomalies in all geophysical parameters (Fig. 1). Historically, it was discovered as a geological-geophysical lineament around 1900 from geological observations by W. Teisseyre despite...
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Thybo, H., Artemieva, I.M. (2020). Trans-European Suture Zone. In: Gupta, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Solid Earth Geophysics. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10475-7_282-1
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