Submerged HoloceneWave-Cut Cliffs in the South-eastern Part of the Baltic Sea: Reinterpretation Based on Recent Bathymetrical Data - The Baltic Sea Basin - page 209

ancient cliff relics (at 58, 47, 41, 33, 26, and 19 m depths) in the western part of the
Gulf of Gdansk (Rosa 1970 ) . In Kharin's ( 1987 ) opinion, discovery of other ancient
coast levels was not improbable.
A schematic map showing the location of fossil coast levels in the eastern part of
the Gdansk Basin was also provided by Boldyrev ( 1992 ) . The map is sketchy and
lacks greatly in detail; the author provided no information as to the database and the
mapping technique applied.
Emelyanov and Romanova ( 2002 ) reconstructed the fossil coastlines of the
Gdansk Basin by comparing eustatic levels and amplitudes of vertical tectonic
movements. Their summary schematics of tectonic uplift or submergence were
developed from 45 hypsometric curves of ancient coastlines found in different parts
of the Baltic and the eustatic curves for tectonically stable regions of the World's
ocean. Superimposition of these schematics over the generalized hypsometric map
of the Baltic basin allowed Emelyanov and Romanova ( 2002 ) to develop a map
of the Baltic bottom topography for any time period relative to the present-day
sea level. They used Punning's ( 1982 ) eustatic curve of the Baltic to calculate dif-
ferences between the present and past levels. Emelyanov and Romanova ( 2002 )
developed three palaeogeographic schemes: for the Baltic Ice Lake (BIL), the Yoldia
Sea, and the Ancylus Lake (10.5-7.8 ka BP). The fossil coastline reconstructed for
the BIL stage (10.5 ka BP) rises from the depth of 70 m west of the Sambian
Peninsula to 40-30 m on the Curonian-Sambian Plateau and up to the modern
sea level near the northern part of the Curonian Spit. During the Yoldia Sea (10-
9.5 ka BP), the sea level rose (the relative southern Baltic level) and the coastlines
occurred at the depths of 70-40 m west of the Sambian Peninsula and 30-25 m on
the Curonian-Sambian Plateau; the Yoldia Sea coast almost coincided again with
the present shoreline near the northern part of the Curonian Spit. Emelyanov and
Romanova ( 2002 ) placed several locations of the Ancylus Lake coast (9-7.8 ka
BP) at the present-day depths, also rising gradually, from 40 to 0 m, northwards.
Clearly, the Emelyanov and Romanova's ( 2002 ) reconstruction differs considerably
from the opinions expressed by other authors (Gudelis 1982 , Uscinowicz 2003 ) that
the SE Baltic did not experience isostasy-related neotectonic movements during the
Holocene.
In his models of sea-level changes and glacio-isostatic rebound in the southern
Baltic, Uscinowicz ( 2003 ) showed the coastline location west of the Vistula Spit
and the Sambian Peninsula. At the early BIL phase (13 ka BP), the coastline was
located at the present depths of 35-40 m and shifted up to 20-40 m during the final
BIL phase (10.3 ka BP); during the early Yoldia Sea (10 ka BP), the maximum
extent of the Ancylus Lake (9.2 ka BP), the early Littorina Sea (7.5 ka BP), and
midway through the Littorina Sea (6 ka BP) and at the post-Littorina stage, the
coastline occupied the present depths of 60, 20-25, 15-20, and about 0 m and above,
respectively.
Thus, a brief review of previous studies on the SE Baltic fossil coastlines above
evidences the absence of a common and generally accepted interpretation and
demonstrates the necessity of clarifying the situation.