Z MINIONYCH CZASÓW Aleksander Czekanowski – odkrywca trapów syberyjskich

Abstract

Aleksander Czekanowski – discoverer of Siberian traps.A b s t r a c t. Flood basalts (traps) and large igneous provinces (LIPs) belong to the hot topics of modern geology, especially due to their causal links with major evolutionary crises and global catastrophes. However, the history of views on volcanic cataclysms, as well as the recognition stages of particular LIPs are still little known. Surprisingly, Polish contribution to this expanding topic may be larger than expected, as exemplified by the issue of field exploration of the largest continental LIP in Siberia. The first exhaustive data were provided in 1873 by Aleksander Czekanowski (1833–1876), a Polish geologist, educated at the universities of Kiev and Dorpat (Tartu),who was exiled by the Russian authorities to Siberia for participation in organizing the Polish January Uprising in 1863. He led several large expeditions to distant parts of Siberia, also in the Ni¿nyja (Lower) Tunguska basin. In the summer of 1873, he discovered numerous exposures of basalt lava floods in the tableland along this river, starting from the area between Preobrazhenka and Jerbogachyan. The observations were announced by letters systematically published in “Izvestiya Imperatorskogo Russkogo Geograficheskogo Obshchestva”. As the most important result of the expedition, he quoted in 1876: “the discovery of previously unknown area of igneous rocks of so large extent that it exceeds the size of any other of its kind”. In his diaries, published posthumously in 1896, Czekanowski described the trap locations in detail, documented in many sketches and cross-sections. Czekanowski, as a discoverer of Siberian traps, has already been appreciated in English-language literature, and should also be properly honored in Polish geology.