MICROINGREDIENT COMPOSITION OF COAL FROM LATE CRETACEOUS STONES OF THE STRIYA FORMATION OF THE SKIBOVA ZONE OF THE CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS

Abstract

Until recently, researchers studying the Carpathians did not pay due attention to the remains of coal occurring in flysch strata. Information on the inclusion of coal fragments in the Cretaceous-Paleogene flysch, varying in scope and research methods, is found in the works of Polish and Ukrainian scientists studying the geological structure of the Carpathians. Fragments from the “Polish part of the Carpathians” were discovered in the section of the flysch complex from the Berean, Valanginian and Goterian stages of the Lower Cretaceous to the Oligocene. Palynological studies first confirmed the Carboniferous age of these fragments. It was established that the spores of the vast majority of these coal fragments were produced by plants of the Middle Carboniferous age and only a few contain spores of the Serpukhov stage of the Early Carboniferous. Coal fragments are also often found in the section of the flysch complex of the Ukrainian Carpathians. They were found in the vicinity of the village of Skhidnytsia, and Boryslav, in inclusions of exotic conglomerates of the Stryi Formation of the Late Cretaceous along the Tysmenytsia River, near the village of Yaremcha, near the town of Skole on the Opir River, near Stary Sambor in the Dniester River basin, near the village of Vilshany on the Terebla River, near the village of Mala Volosyanka in the Opir River basin, near the village of Nyzhne Vysotske on the Stryi River and in the Tysmenytsia River basin. They are widely distributed mainly in the Mesozoic sediments of the Skybova Zone. Until now, no thorough geological, petrological, physical, macro- and micropaleobotanical studies of these remains have been carried out. The age of formation of this coal has been specified, the initial plant material that accumulated in the swamps, the conditions of its decomposition and transformation into peat have been established. Probable areas and directions of transfer of sedimentary material that was eroded and delivered to sedimentation sites where coal fragments were also found among various sediment components were identified. Fragments of humic coal of the Middle Carboniferous period, discovered and tested in the deposits of the Stryi Formation of the Upper Cretaceous of the Skybova Zone of the Ukrainian Carpathians, were methodologically studied and described in detail at the macro- and microscopic levels.