A sample of late Viséan limestone from the Włodawa IG-4 borehole, east of Lublin, Poland, yielded a piece of a tooth and a few hundred well-preserved scales comparable to those of “Ctenacanthus” costellatus Traquair, 1884 from Glencartholm, Scotland, UK. Most of the scales are typical compound body scales of the ctenacanthid type. Their crowns are composed of several separate odontodes whose distal ends are turned backwards and bases are characterised by concave undersides. In the material, there are also sparse scales with similar crowns but with flat or convex bulbous bases, as well as ornamented plates and single, star-like denticles, probably from the head region. The taxonomic status of “Ctenacanthus” costellatus was analysed and a new generic name for that species, viz. Glencartius gen. nov., is proposed.
The aim of this study was to reconstruct the location mechanism of a Triassic sandstone wedge within folded Palaeozoic rocks. A vertically oriented Buntsandstein succession (Lower Triassic) from Józefka Quarry (Holy Cross Mountains, central Poland), steeply wedged within folded Devonian carbonates, is recognised as an effect of normal faulting within a releasing stepover. The sandstone succession, corresponding to the Zagnańsk Formation in the local lithostratigraphic scheme, is represented by two complexes, interpreted as deposits of a sand-dominated alluvial plain (older complex), and coarse-grained sands and gravels of a braided river system (younger complex). The sandstone complex was primarily formed as the lowermost part of the several kilometres thick Mesozoic cover of the Holy Cross Mountains Fold Belt (HCFB), later eroded as a result of the Late Cretaceous/Paleogene uplift of the area. Tectonic analysis of the present-day position of the deformed sandstone succession shows that it is fault-bounded by a system of strike-slip and normal faults, which we interpret as a releasing stepover. Accordingly, the formation of the stepover in the central part of the late Palaeozoic HCFB is evidence of a significant role of strike-slip faulting within this tectonic unit during Late Cretaceous/Paleogene times. The faulting was probably triggered by reactivation of the terminal Palaeozoic strike-slip fault pattern along the western border of the Teisseyre–Tornquist Zone.
A huge isolated accumulation, more than 3 m thick and 10 m wide, of densely packed, uncrushed brachiopods has been found in Józefka Quarry within the Middle/Upper Devonian Szydłówek Beds deposited in a relatively deep environment of an intrashelf basin (Kostomłoty facies zone, western Holy Cross Mountains, Poland). The low-diversity assemblage is strongly dominated by the atrypide Desquamatia globosa jozefkae Baliński subsp. nov. and, to a lesser degree, by the rhynchonellide Coeloterorhynchus dillanus (Schmidt, 1941), which constitute 72.8% and 22.1% of the fauna, respectively. Less frequent are specimens representing the genera Hypothyridina, Schizophoria and Phlogoiderynchus. According to the conodont fauna found within the coquina bed, the stratigraphic position of the shell accumulation is close to the Givetian/ Frasnian boundary. The brachiopods are associated with numerous crinoids and less frequent bryozoans, receptaculitids (Palaeozoic problematica), sponges and solitary corals. Although it is difficult to entirely exclude the autochthonous nature of the brachiopod coquina member, its allochthonous origin and redeposition of the brachiopod shells to the deep basin by gravity flows is much more probable. Such conclusion is supported by the following facts: (1) the position of the complex in a succession of deep-marine basinal facies impoverished in oxygen; (2) its lateral thinning-out and composite internal stratification; (3) the lensshaped geometry of the coquina bed in the section perpendicular to the bedding dip; (4) high variability of the sediments preserved within the shells; and (5) the preferred orientation of the shells. The brachiopods mixed with crinoidal debris were probably transported by low-velocity, high-density, gravity-induced debris flows. Lack of fossils typical of the Middle Devonian shallows, such as massive stromatoporoids, amphiporoids and tabulates, indicates that the source area of the bioclastic material was not located in the shallowest part of the shelf, but most probably on a submarine sea-mount to the north of present-day Józefka, as suggested by earlier investigators. The triggering mechanism of the allochthonous deposition was an earthquake rather than storm activity. The enormous thickness of the brachiopod complex is probably caused by the sinking of bioclastic material, transported in succeeding depositional multi-events, in a soft, muddy bottom, typical of the Szydłówek Beds deposition.