Stratigrafia e petrografia delle arenarie di Albanella (valle del Calore, Appennino campano)

The Albanella Sandstones crop out in the Calore River Valley (Campanian Apennines). They have until now been considered Oligocene in age and interpreted as a formation of the Cilento Group, the most ancient sedimentary cycle unconformably overlying the Southern Apennine internal units. Biostratigraphic results, based on nannofossils assemblages, evidence a Burdigalian age for the entire succession, and field data show that the Albanella Sandstones conformably lie on a Cretaceous-Oligocene calcareous-argillaceous succession, till now informally defined as "unita ad affinita sicilide". Therefore they correspond to preorogenic flysch deposits, forming the uppermost part of the above tectonic unit sequence. Sedimentological features are consistent with a turbiditic origin. The stratigraphic succession evolves from thick-bedded arenaceous-conglomeratic facies to thin-bedded more distal ones. The arenites are quartzose-feldspathic sandstones supporting a metamorphiclastic-plutoniclastic provenance. The foregoing data allow us to exclude any correlation between the Albanella Sandstones and the Cilento Group Formations. Comparison with some flysch deposits of the Sicilide Complex Units, as Corleto Sandstones, at present cannot be proposed owing to the lack, up to date, of data concerning these latter.