The Pindos Fold-and-thrust belt (Greece): inversion kinematics of a passive continental margin

Abstract

Continuous exposure in the Pindos mountain chain (Greece) and the detailed stratigraphic measurements in the area enable us to construct eight balanced cross sections across the Pindos Fold-and-thrust belt (PFTB) and to approach quantitatively some parameters which controlled foreland evolution. The 160-km-wide passive continental margin of the Apulian continent in Greece was progressively shortened from east to west at rates of 6 mm/year between the Early Oligocene and Late Eocene. From the rear to the frontal part of the wedge, fault-bend folds, duplexes and imbricates were formed, while strain was partitioned into faulting (~34%), layer parallel shortening (~23%) and buckling (~9%). Foreland subsidence and internal deformation of the orogenic wedge are strongly affected by two parameters of equal importance: the thrust load of the overthrusted microcontinents and the rigidity of the underthrusted Apulian passive margin. Changes in the thickness of the pre-orogenic sediments and reactivated transform faults induced salients. During the Lower Miocene, the orogenic wedge in the Peloponnese suffered additional uplift and westward gravitational gliding induced by the intracontinental subduction of the Palaeozoic rift zone of the Phyllite-Quartzite Series, which was reactivated and returned to the earth’s surface during the Hellenic orogeny.