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Based on a revision of stratigraphic and structural data relative to the Balearic basin, the Corsica‐Sardinia massif, the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea and the Northern Apennines the following new hypothesis is proposed for the area located between the Sardinian‐Corsican‐Provençal and Northern Apennines regions: (a) convergence with subduction of oceanic crust under the Iberian plate beginning in the Late Cretaceous; (b) continental collision in the Oligocene‐Aquitanian, with development of the Northern Apennines belt and transpressive deformation in a hinterland that consisted of the Corsica‐Sardinia massif (still attached to the Iberian plate); (c) in the Burdigalian the tectonic regime changed from compressive to extensional. During this period the Corsica‐Sardinia massif migrated contemporaneously with opening of the Balearic basin, the Sardinian rift, and the Northern Tyrrhenian sea; (d) from the Burdigalian to the present, there was contemporaneous compression at the front and extension at the back of the Northern Apennines chain; both these features progressively migrated toward the east. The coeval extension and compression is attributed to lithospheric delamination toward the external part of the belt.

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Abstract:The Anisian-Carnian Verrucano Group of the Tuscan Metamorphic Units and the Triassic-Hettangian Pseudoverrucano Formation of the homonymous unit are mainly continental redbeds occurring in Tuscany at the base of the Alpine orogenic cycle. A study carded out throughout the Apennine, Maghrebian and Betic Chains emphasized the presence in all these orogenic belts of deposits more or less coeval and similar both to the metamorphic Verrucano and to the unmetamorphosed Pseudoverrucano. Thus, the distinction of Verrucano and Pseudoverrucano successions has a palaeogeographical and geodynamic importance at the scale of the Western Mediterranean. Both successions developed during the continental rift stage of Pangaea, which led to later break-up at the edges of a future microplate, interposed between the Europe, Africa and Adria-Apulia plates, but they are characterized by different tectonometamorphic evolution. Pseudoverrucano-like deposits, devoid of Alpine metamorphism, characterize the highest tectonic units of the nappe stack and they overthrust units bearing Verrucano-like deposits. These latter show an Alpine tectonometamorphic history marked during the Miocene by intense deformation and HP/LT metamorphism (at pressures in the range of 0.8-2 GPa), followed by a retrograde phase associated with decompression, suggesting subduction and subsequent exhumation of continental crust. Intriguing palaeogeographical problems arise from the analysis of Verrucanobearing units, because the same evolution seems to characterize both units considered to belong to a realm similar to that of the north-verging Austroalpine nappe system and some units referred to the south-verging fold-thrust belt derived from the Adria-Apulia palaeomargin.

Italy owes its complex geological structure to a double switch in tectonic regime, which involved the opening of the Tethys Ocean during Early Mesozoic time, its closure leading to development of the Apennine-Maghrebide fold-and-thrust belt during the Eocene-Recent interval, and the post-orogenic opening of the Tyrrhenian Sea since Miocene time. This history of tectonic inversion is partly preserved within two major fault zones, the Valnerina Line, in the central Apennines, and the Gratteri-Mount Mufara Line, in central-northern Sicily, which were repeatedly reactivated with different kinematic characters. The relatively long life of these structures indicates that strain was localized along anisotropies inherited from early deformation episodes. However, the progressive widening of both fault zones through time may result from strain-hardening fault-rock behaviour during subsequent deformations, thus suggesting that fault reactivation does not imply fault-zone weakening as is often assumed.