Abstract
Abstract The tectonic development of the western part of the Pindos ocean in southern Greece is exemplified by the mountainous Pindos thrust belt in the NW Peloponnese. A Late Triassic-Early Cenozoic succession exposed within imbricate thrust sheets records a range of deep-water siliciclastic, redeposited carbonate and siliceous sediments, which in general become more distal oceanwards towards the east. Igneous rocks, locally dated as Triassic, occur within a mélange that is entrained beneath and within the Pindos thrust stack; these igneous rocks and related sediments are interpreted as remnants of a continent-ocean transition zone. ‘Immobile’ element geochemistry is explicable by rifting of a compositionally heterogeneous subcontinental mantle, possibly related to pre-existing Hercynian subduction, although coeval Triassic subduction cannot be excluded based on evidence from this area alone. Localized, ‘enriched’ basalts are interpreted as fragments of oceanic seamounts formed in a relatively distal setting. Late Paleocene-Early Eocene (locally Mid-Eocene) siliciclastic turbidites, derived from the north, record the latest deposition prior to incorporation of the sedimentary succession into a westward-migrating accretionary wedge during post-Early Eocene time in the NW Peloponnese. Structural restoration of the well-ordered thrust stack indicates a minimum of 201 km (55%) of shortening at an average rate of 5.8 mm a −1 . As the Pindos allochthon approached the Apulian continent, the Gavrovo-Tripolitza foreland underwent flexural upwarp during the Mid-Eocene, followed by collapse to create a foreland basin by the Late Eocene. This basin was infilled with generally upward-thickening and -coarsening deep-water turbiditic sediments of Late Eocene-Early Oligocene age. The foreland was, in turn, overthrust by the Pindos accretionary prism during post-Early Paleocene time, and was then imbricated and thrust over the Ionian foreland basin to the west by Pliocene time.
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