Transport and trapping of sediment in the Triassic Buntsandstein Group: New insights based on a multimethodological approach

What is the status for sediment-transport reconstructions of the Lower Triassic intracontinental Buntsandstein Group and equivalents? Where and why was sediment trapped? Can central Europe be compared to equivalents in the interconnected North Sea? We answer these questions with a multimethodological approach. Sedimentation took place during arid climate in a sag basin of the Central European Basin in Pangea. Fluvial palaeotransport directions indicate detritus transported into a large central endorheic playa lake from the Massif Central in the west and the Bohemian Massif in the east. Aeolian transport mainly was from the south, causing sediment mixing between different fluvial catchments as indicated by zircon grain-size and U-Pb-age correlations, and zircon grains from the Variscan belt and the Bohemian Massif in Denmark. They indicate temporary desiccation of the playa lake. Alongshore lacustrine transport modified the detrital composition further. Also several submerged topographic barriers influenced sediment routes. In Denmark, heavy-mineral, zircon, and seismic data demonstrate that the Ringkøbing-Fyn High prevented sediment supply from the Fennoscandian Shield. In the central basin, transport around the Eichsfeld-Altmark Swell caused seemingly contradicting provenance results from petrography, cathodoluminescence of quartz, and zircon data due to sorting processes. Further north in the central North Sea, seismic and petrophysical data indicate that sediment traps were more local due to mobilisation of underlying Zechstein-Group salt, creating Triassic minibasins. Zircon and whole-rock geochemical data are in progress to reveal if the sources were local or if the area rather was comparable with the more regional sediment-transport systems in continental Europe.