Post-Oligocene Sediment-Dispersal Systems and Unroofing History of the Calabrian Microplate, Italy

Abstract

The composition as well as stratigraphic and structural relations of sandstone and sand derived from erosion of the Calabrian Arc provide constraints for paleogeographic and tectonic models of southern Italy. Clastic detritus in the following sedimentary assemblages was derived mainly from provenance terranes within the strongly deformed Calabrian Arc allochthon: (1) the Paleogene Liguride Complex accretionary wedge, deposited in a remnant ocean basin that lay east of the Calabrian Arc and west of the Adria margin; (2) Burdigalian to lower Messinian foreland basin successions, widely developed in the southern Apennines, representing progressively shifted foredeep basins and related wedgetop basins; (3) upper Tortonian to Messinian, mainly nonmarine to shallow-marine successions, cropping out in the western Calabrian Arc, representing synrift clastic wedges related to backarc rifting in the Tyrrhenian area; and (4) the Quaternary of the northern Calabrian Arc, represented by foredeep and related wedgetop basins (the Gulf of Taranto and Corigliano Basin) on the eastern side and a slope basin (Paola Basin) on the western side—the eastern Tyrrhenian margin. These received detritus primarily from the deep erosion of northern Calabria. The modern deep-marine basins of offshore northern Calabria have many similarities to the middle to upper Miocene clastic sequences in both foreland and backarc regions of southern Italy.