Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Web of Science (8) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by DeCelles, P. G. Articles by Cavazza, W. Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

Upper Messinian conglomerates in Calabria, southern Italy: Response to orogenic wedge adjustment following Mediterranean sea-level changes

¹ Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721
² Dipartimento di Scienze Mineralogiche, Università di Bologna, Piazza Porta S. Donato 1, Bologna 40126, Italy

Widespread uppermost Miocene conglomerate and sandstone along the Apenninic-Maghrebian orogenic belt in the central Mediterranean region cannot be explained as a result of the Messinian base-level falls. Along the Ionian coast of Calabria, southern Italy, these rocks were deposited in marine fan deltas and rest in angular unconformity or disconformity upon the internal part of the Calabrian accretionary wedge. We propose that the upper Messinian deposits were produced by internal shortening of the Calabrian accretionary wedge as it compensated for the decrease in upper surface slope caused by flexural rebound as the 3.4-km-thick Ionian water mass evaporated. Latest Miocene-Pliocene marine inundation reloaded the basin, restored the wedge to a critical state, and caused the rear part of the wedge again to become tectonically stable. This isostatically driven mechanism could explain widespread latest Messinian thrust faults and coarse siliciclastic deposits along much of the Apenninic-Maghrebian orogen.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				W. Cavazza and R. V. Ingersoll Detrital Modes of the Ionian Forearc Basin Fill (Oligocene-Quaternary) Reflect the Tectonic Evolution of the Calabria-Peloritani Terrane (Southern Italy) Journal of Sedimentary Research, March 1, 2005; 75(2): 268 - 279. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]