Abstract: The growth of carbonate buildups in the northern, stable shelf of the Tethyan Ocean was the principal factor in the development of diversified sea-bottom relief in the Late Jurassic basin. Reconstruction of this relief has been a matter of numerous controversies. This paper provides an analysis of published data on elevation differences on sea bottom along the SW margin of the Holy Cross Mts. and in the Cracow-Wielun Upland. Moreover, methods of reconstruction of synsedimentary relief are presented.
In the Late Oxfordian the elevations on basin floor in the Czestochowa area (Cracow-Wielun Upland) were about 100 meters at most, and were presumably even lower. The largest (over 200 meters) elevation differences of sea-bottom relief existing in the Czestochowa area at the Oxfordian/Kimmeridgian have been postulated when the recently observed differences in thickness between the deposits of carbonate buildup and of equivalent basinal facies were identified as a relief. In fact, different thickness is, in considerable part, an effect of differential compaction.