The upper Messinian-lowermost Pliocene out-of-sequence event in the southern Apennines (Italy): a study about the kinematics of the major thrust faults

The southern Apennines are a fold-and-thrust belt formed since the lower Miocene until the middle Pleistocene (e.g., Vitale and Ciarcia, 2013). Although a wide literature exists about the geology of this orogenic chain, few are the studies about the kinematics of the major thrusts. With this in mind, this work is aimed to investigate the out-of-sequence regional thrust system exposed in the Campania region. This system is characterized by a frontal ramp exposed along the N-NE side of the platform carbonate ridge forming the regional mountain backbone. The main structure is also exposed as a flat thrust in the Campagna and Giffoni tectonic windows located in the internal sector of the chain. We analyzed several outcrops; in some of them, we observed the Mesozoic carbonates superposed onto the upper Miocene wedge-top basin deposits of the Castelvetere Group. The kinematic analysis of major and minor structures suggests the occurrence of two thrust fault sets: (i) the oldest indicates an eastward tectonic vergence, whereas (ii) the youngest, and more developed, toward the north. In the external zones, the N-S shortening was synchronous with the deposition of the upper Messinian-lowermost Pliocene Altavilla Fm. The origin of this out-of-sequence regional deformation is still matter of debate (e.g., Vitale et al., 2017). In our opinion it was the shallow expression of a deep-seated thrusting episode within the buried Apulian slab. It was dominated by thrust ramps (thick-skinned tectonics) mainly verging to East, and by the N-verging structures associated to lateral ramps.

References

Vitale Stefano and Ciarcia Sabatino (2013) - Tectono-stratigraphic and kinematic evolution of the southern Apennines/Calabria-Peloritani Terrane system (Italy). Tectonophysics, 583, 164–182.

Vitale Stefano, Tramparulo Francesco d'Assisi, Ciarcia Sabatino, Amore F. Ornella, Prinzi Ernesto Paolo and Laiena Fabio (2017) - The northward tectonic transport in the southern Apennines: examples from the Capri Island and western Sorrento Peninsula (Italy). International Journal of Earth Sciences (Geologische Rundschau), 106, 97–113.