The Szamotuły salt diapir and Mid-Polish Trough: Decoupling during both Triassic-Jurassic rifting and Alpine inversion

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The Szamotuły diapir is located on the southwestern shoulder of the Mid-Polish Trough in west-central Poland. The area underwent crustal-scale extension during the Triassic-Jurassic and Alpine-related inversion during the Late Cretaceous to Paleogene. The diapir is sourced entirely from the Permian Zechstein salt, but there are also thin evaporites within the Triassic. A regional 2D depth-migrated seismic profile, an array of 2D time-migrated data, and quantitative structural restorations are used to illustrate that extensional and contractional deformation were almost completely decoupled by the Zechstein salt. Beneath the salt, interpreted Carboniferous half-grabens were reactivated during the Triassic, offsetting the base salt but not the top salt and causing regional thickening of the Triassic-Jurassic overburden. Inversion was accommodated by reverse movements on the deep faults and uplift of the Triassic-Jurassic strata to form the broad anticlinorium of the Mid-Polish Swell. Cover extension and contraction were concentrated around the Szamotuły Diapir. A linear reactive diapir formed during the Early to Middle Triassic and broke through to become a passive diapir during the Late Triassic that subsequently widened into the Jurassic. Along strike, coeval extension was recorded by ongoing reactive diapirism. Alpine contraction caused squeezing of the passive diapir and the correlative reactive diapir, folding of flanking and overlying strata, and inversion of some of the reactive normal faults. However, shortening was accommodated differently above and below the Upper Triassic Keuper salt. Lower and Middle Triassic strata moved laterally into salt, whether into the passive diapir or into the reactive diapir along strike. Younger strata were folded and thrusted, with delamination at the Keuper evaporites that were depositionally thicker adjacent to the reactive diapir. Zechstein salt squeezed from deeper levels flowed passively into the space created by delamination, producing an allochthonous salt wing in the subsurface.