Plio-Pleistocene stratigraphy and relations between marine and non-marine successions in the Middle Valley of the Tiber River (Latium, Umbria)

Abstract

The Middle Valley of the Tiber River (MVT) corresponds to the “Paglia-Tevere Graben”, a “neoautochthonous” basin developed since the latest Early Pliocene. The basin is in part linked with the intrapenninic Tiberino and Rieti Basins to the east, and with the Roman Basin to the south. The filling is mostly made up of Plio-Pleistocene marine deposits, unconformably overlaying the meso-cenozoic substratum. Two outcropping 3rd order depositional sequences have been recognised: 1) the older is composed of Lower Pliocene-earliest Upper Pliocene shelfal clays and sands (G. puncticulata and G. aemiliana Chronozones) and rarer continental deposits; 2) the younger is late Gelasian-Santernian in age (G. inflata and G. cariacoensis-B. elegans marginata Chronozones) and mostly corresponds to the “Chiani-Tevere formation”, composed of neritic clayey-sandy sediments interfingered with fluvial-deltaic gravelly-sandy deposits. The correlation between marine and non-marine deposits is based both on physical-stratigraphic observations and data (lithostratigraphy, facies analysis, sequence stratigraphy) and on their integration with biostratigraphic (foraminifera) and magnetostratigraphic data and with the numerical values of the 87Sr/86Sr ratio measured on mollusc shells, for the marine deposits, and with biochronological data (fresh- and brackish-water molluscs and ostracods, mammals) for the non-marine and transitional deposits. As for the younger successions from the latest Early Pleistocene to Holocene, which are characterised by travertines and gravelly fluvial terraced deposits, the correlation with the marine successions of the Roman Basin is indirect and mostly based on biochronology and on relations between sedimentary and volcanic units.