REGULARITIES OF THE GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE AND AMBER-BEARING OF THE PRYPIAT PALEOGENE DEPRESSION

Abstract

Ideas about the division of the Prypiat Paleogene Depression within Ukraine into separate parts changed with the accumulation of knowledge, which was based on the results of a general geological study of the territory and searches for industrial amber deposits. Examples of zoning the territory of amber deposits in the region can be found in the works of M. Krynytska, V. Matsui, V. Melnychuk, U. Naumenko, V. Nesterovskyi, V. Shpyrka, V. Yakovleva and other Ukrainian geologists. The proposed article presents the authors' considerations regarding the regularities of the geological structure and history of the region's development in the Paleogene period in order to substantiate approaches to the stratigraphic dissection of Paleogene deposits, reflect the scale of their development and the nature of the Paleogene structures formed. The research area and its borders were an area of denudation before the amber accumulation era, from the end of the Late Cretaceous to the beginning of the Middle Eocene. During this time, a complex erosional relief was formed, which was inherited by the subsequent Eocene transgression of the sea. Amber in the bowels of Polissia is confined to marine sediments of the Paleogene (46.0–23.0 million years ago). They fill the Prypiat and Dnieper depressions of the Baltic-Dnieper Paleogene basin, located in the southwestern part of the East European Platform. Based on the results obtained and in accordance with the geological structure, the Prypiat Paleogene Depression is divided into three structural segments ‒ Western (in the north of Volyn and Rivne regions), Central (in Zhytomyr region), and Eastern (in Zhytomyr and Kyiv regions). From the point of view of paleogeography, the marginal-marine, inland-marine, and marine marginal-inland-continental structural-paleogeographic regions are distinguished in the territory of the Prypiat Early Oligocene sedimentary marine basin of the Mezhyhiria epoch. Separate amber-bearing zones and amber-bearing regions have been identified within the Prypiat amber-bearing basin.