Structural, stratigraphic, and petrological clues for a Cretaceous–Paleogene abortive rift in the southern Adria domain (southern Apennines, Italy)

Abstract

This study provides new structural, stratigraphic, and geochemical data and a literature review of the Cretaceous–Paleogene stratigraphy, biostratigraphy, tectonics, and magmatism in the southern Apennines belt, Italy, with the aim to demonstrate the occurrence of an Albian to Eocene abortive rifting stage in the southern Adria domain. During this time, the tectono‐stratigraphic evolution of the Adria domain is characterized by episodes of coeval uplift and drowning. Different sectors of the Apennine and Apulian platforms were so characterized by changes in the paleoenvironments, leading to different stratigraphic records (from shallow‐water to slope and basin), as well as the development of thick bauxitic levels. Contemporaneously, a large amount of calciclastic sediments supply from the emerging sectors was deposited in the basins surrounding the carbonate platforms (i.e., Ligurian and Lagonegro–Molise basins). The Albian–Eocene interval was also characterized by the occurrence of anorogenic magmatism and synsedimentary extensional faulting that, along with the changed sedimentary facies distribution, points out for a crustal‐scale extensional tectonics. We suggest that such tectonics is the result of a rifting episode, characterized by limited anorogenic magmatism, starting in the Albian and reaching its climax in the uppermost Cretaceous–Eocene times. In this scenario, the extensional tectonics recorded in the Adria domain was the product during an event of a single abortive rift system, which extended toward the south, from the southern margin of the Ligurian Ocean to the Hyblean (Sicily), Pelagian (Tunisia), and Sirte Basin Province Rift (Libya).