The northward tectonic transport in the southern Apennines: examples from the Capri Island and western Sorrento Peninsula (Italy)

Abstract

We analyzed a thrust fault system located in the western Sorrento Peninsula and Capri Island (southern Italy) where several mesoscale structures related to the main thrusts, such as Riedel shear planes, overturned folds, minor thrust and back-thrust faults, suggest a dominant northward tectonic transport. Major and minor thrust faults, generally characterized by a ramp-flat geometry, involved the Mesozoic Apennine carbonates, the Middle Miocene foredeep, and the unconformable thrust-top basin deposits. The biostratigraphic analysis of calcareous nannoplankton assemblages on the thrust-top basin sediments indicates an age not older than late Tortonian. We propose that this out-of-sequence thrusting stage was related to a regional tectonic event widespread in the entire southern Apennines, probably occurred in the Pliocene time simultaneously with the activity of deep-seated thrust faults that involved the buried carbonates of the Apulian platform. These out-of-sequence thrust faults, here referred to as “envelopment thrusts,” were enucleated in a lower structural level with respect to the allochthonous wedge, representing the W–E segments of large regional arcuate structures.