The Alpine evolution of the Southern Alps around the Giudicarie faults: A Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene transfer zone

Abstract Data supporting relevant Late Cretaceous–Early Eocene sinistral displacement along the Giudicarie fault zone and a minor Neogene dextral displacement along the Periadriatic lineament are discussed. The pre-Adamello structural belt is present only in the internal Lombardy zone, located W of the Adamello massif. This belt is unknown in the Dolomites and surrounding areas located to the E of the Giudicarie lineament. Upper Cretaceous–Early Eocene thick syntectonic Flysch deposits of Lombardy and Giudicarie are well preserved along the southern and eastern border of the pre-Adamello belt (S-vergent Alpine orogen). Towards the E, in the Dolomites and in the Carnic Alps and external Dinarides, only incomplete remnants of Flysch deposits, Aptian–Albian and Turonian–Maastrichtian in age, are present. They can be considered as equivalent to those of Lombardy and Giudicarie formerly in connection to each other along the N-Giudicarie corridor. To the S, the syntectonic Flysch deposits are laterally replaced by the calcareous red pelagites of the Scaglia Rossa and by the carbonate shelf deposits of the Friuli (to the E) and Bagnolo (to the S) carbonate platforms. The different location in the southern structural accretion of the eastern and western opposite blocks (the Dolomites versus the pre-Adamello belt) can be related to the Cretaceous–Eocene convergence. In this frame, the N-Giudicarie fault has been considered as part of a former transfer zone, which produced the sinistral lateral displacement of the Southern Alps front for an amount of some 50 km. During the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene the transfer zone was mostly sealed by the Paleogene Adamello batholith. Oligocene to Neogene compressional evolution inverted the N-Giudicarie fault into a backthrust of the Austroalpine units over the South-Alpine chain.

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