The importance of Iberia for the restoration of the Mesozoic Alpine Tethys

Fossil remnants of rifted margins sampled in orogens enable to unravel the nature of rocks, structures and conditions controlling the formation of rifted margins and lithosphere breakup. However, a major problem in orogens is that disconnected remnants of only one margin are preserved, while the conjugate has often been subducted and/or obliterated during convergence. Thus, our understanding of rift processes leading to lithosphere breakup is hampered by the impossibility to direct access to well-preserved examples of conjugate rifted margins fossilised onshore. Here we focus our attention on the Mesozoic Alpine Tethys, bounded by the European and African plates and interleaving crustal blocks such Iberia and Adria. Two key points have to be resolved in order to reconstruct conjugate distal margins in the Alpine Tethys paleogeographic setting. First, a restoration of the European western side of the Alpine Tethys has to be performed. Second, the position of Iberia during the Mesozoic has to be restored taking into account the evolution and opening of the southern North Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay. Here we propose a new Mesozoic kinematic model for Iberia, which is compatible at a first order and large scale with recently published data and interpretations from the North Iberian margin and the Pyrenean domain. We discuss the impact of the results for the reconstruction of the Alpine Tethys.