Abstract
Understanding the influence of the Late Miocene-Quaternary opening of the Tyrrhenian Basin on the evolution of the external sectors of the Africa paleo-margin in Sicily, actually, represents a hard challenge, even though several, and contrasting, models have been proposed in the last decades. One open problem refers to localizing the main regional scale tectonic lineaments of Sicily that accommodated the hundreds of kilometers of lateral displacement, due to the Tyrrhenian Basin opening. In the present work, we present the results rising from a detailed field mapping carried out in relevant vast areas of central Sicily. These data enabled to reconstruct a Neogene-Quarternary kinematic evolutionary model of the collision belt of Sicily. We analyzed the northern tectonic margin of the Caltanissetta Through, which represents a structural depression hosting a thick allochthonous tectonic wedge, on which lay different unconformable thrust-top basin deposits. In more details, our study aims to reconstruct the tectono-sedimentary Late Tortonian-to-Quaternary evolution of this tectonic wedge, revealing that regional E-W-trending dextral shear zones deform and cut the NE-oriented, SE-verging, thrust-and-fold belt. The strike-slip tectonics thus controlled the deposition of different sedimentary cycles on the thrust-top basins and governed the tectonic inversion of the external sectors of the Africa paleo-margin.
Highlights
The Sicily collision belt represents the eastern termination of the east-west striking collision belt, which overthrust the Africa continental margin of the western Mediterranean [1] [2]
The Sicily mountain belt consists of an allochthonous edifice that derived from the tectonic imbrication of the Meso-Cenozoic successions of the African paleo-margin (e.g. Panormide and Imerese units of [2]), which are involved, together with the overlying Neo-Tethian derived units (e.g. Sicilide units of [2]) along the E-W striking Africa-Europe collision zone [5] [6] [12] [20] (Figure 1)
The new field data, collected in the analyzed key areas of the Caltanissetta Through, allowed us to provide a new interpretation of the origin and significance of the Plio-Pleistocene basins of central Sicily
Summary
This orogenic segment has been classically described as a SE-verging thrust and fold edifice, resulting from a complete orogenic cycle that involved the Europe and the Africa continental margins and the intermediate Neo-Tethyan accretionary wedge terrains, sandwiched between them [2]-[8]. In the second part of the paper we will argue on the Neogene-Quaternary deformation of the Caltanissetta Thrust Wedge, based on original geological field mapping of two key areas (Butera and Centuripe areas), discussing about the relationships between the main tectonic features of central Sicily. Our study provides new insights to better understand the relation between the thrust propagation within the CTW and the concurrent displacement along the main dextral SEL and their relation with the Tortonian-Quaternary tectono-sedimentary evolution of the region
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