Anatomy and Jurassic evolution of a Hercynian basement high (Caloveto High - Calabria, Southern Italy)

Abstract

The Caloveto area in North-East Calabria hosts a stratigraphic succession which documents the evolution from shallow water carbonates to deeper-water pelagic and hemipelagic deposits, bearing ample evidence for severe tectonic control on Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous sedimentation. Geological mapping indicates that the shallow-water carbonates, also with coral assemblages, formed a narrow fringe around a high of the Hercynian basement, made of lowgrade metamorphic rock, which remained emergent throughout the Pliensbachian and became an intrabasinal high which stood proud of the Longobucco basin, hosting thin pelagic sedimentation through most of the Jurassic. An extensional phase in the Toarcian disrupted and foundered the benthic carbonate factory, whose drowning isdocumented by a change to Rosso Ammonitico-type deposits. This resulted in a complex network of neptunian dykes (also intruding the basement) and in-situ breccias. Starting in the late Toarcian, the rugged submarine topography was gradually leveled by onlapping marls, radiolarites and pelagic limestone, which sealed the Toarcian fault zones producing a diverse array of unconformities. Colonization by microbial communities characterizes the initial stages ofmarine sedimentation around the cores of Paleozoic basement, as banded polychrome microbialites and “swollen” phyllites, a result of the microbially-influenced/induced displacive growth of calcium carbonate crystals along split cleavage planes, constitute an unexpected field tool for identifying basin margins. Silicified marginal zones in the shallow water limestone characterize, in analogy withother Tethyan regions, the onlap unconformities of chert-rich basinal units on the submerged carbonate fringes.