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Eocene to present subduction of southern Adria mantle lithosphere beneath the Dinarides

Richard A. Bennett¹, Sigrún Hreinsdóttir¹, Goran Buble¹, Tomislav Bai², eljko Bai³, Marijan Marjanovi³, Gabe Casale⁴, Andrew Gendaszek⁴ and Darrel Cowan⁴

¹ University of Arizona, Department of Geosciences, 1040 East 4th Street, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA
² Faculty of Geodesy, University of Zagreb and Croatian Geodetic Institute, Zagreb 10144, Croatia
³ Croatian State Geodetic Administration, Zagreb 10000, Croatia
⁴ University of Washington, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, P.O. Box 351310, Seattle, Washington 98195-1310, USA

We modeled global positioning system measurements of crustal velocity along a N13°E profile across the southern Adria microplate and south-central Dinarides mountain belt using a one-dimensional elastic dislocation model. We assumed a N77°W fault strike orthogonal to the average azimuth of the measured velocities, but we used a constrained random search algorithm minimizing misfit to the velocities to determine all other parameters of the model. The model fault plane reaches the surface seaward of mapped SW-verging thrusts of Eocene and perhaps Neogene age along the coastal areas of southern Dalmatia, consistent with SW-migrating deformation in an active fold-and-thrust belt. P-wave tomography shows a NE-dipping high-velocity slab to 160 km depth, which reaches the surface as Adria, dips gently beneath the foreland, and becomes steep beneath the Dinarides topographic high. The thrust plane is located directly above the shallowly dipping part of the slab. The pattern of precisely located seismicity is broadly consistent with both the tomography and geodesy; deeper earthquakes (down to 70 km) correlate spatially with the slab, and shallower earthquakes are broadly clustered around the geodetically inferred thrust plane. The model fault geometry and loading rate, ages of subaerially exposed thrusts in the fold-and-thrust belt, and the length of subducted slab are all consistent with Adria-Eurasia collision involving uninterrupted subduction of southern Adria mantle lithosphere beneath Eurasia since Eocene time.

Key Words: Adria microplate • continental collision • crustal deformation • mountain building