Structural setting at the contact of the Southern Alps and Dinarides in western Cerkljansko region (western Slovenia)

Abstract

The area between the villages of Reka in the Idrijca Valley, Bukovo and Zakriž near Cerkno belongs geographically and geotectonically to the Dinarides. The area consists of two large inner thrust blocks of the Trnovo nappe, which were thrusted for tens of kilometers in the direction of SW to their present position. They are overlain by the Tolmin nappe, the lowest thrust unit of the Southern Alps. The Tolmin nappe was thrusted from N to S and consists of two inner thrust blocks and a smaller intermediate inner sheet. In the western part of the area the contact between Southern Alps and the Dinarides runs along the regional Sovodenj fault.Although the rocks in the considered thrust units are about the same age, different stratigraphic settings could be recognized. The lithostratigraphic features of the Ladinian-Lower Carnian Pseudizilian beds are particularly striking. Succession of clastic and carbonate rocks was deposited in deep-marine Slovenian basin. In both the Trnovo and Tolmin nappe, Pseudozilian beds occur in the lithologically characteristic sequences but, in the Tolmin nappe, they are developed in a much greater thickness than in the Trnovo nappe and pass continuously upwards into Amphyclina beds, while in the Trnovo nappe, on the other hand, the succession of Pseudozilian beds is much thinner and is overlain by the platform Cordevol dolomite.