Dipartimento di Geologia, Paleontologia e Geofisica, Università di Padova, Via Giotto 1, 35137 Padua, Italy

In the past few years, a wealth of paleomagnetic data gathered from Neogene sediments consistently showed that since ca. 10 Ma the Calabria terrane coherently drifted ~500 km ESE-ward from the Sardinian margin, and rotated 15 –20 clockwise (CW) as a rigid microplate between 2 and 1 Ma. Here we report on a high-resolution paleomagnetic investigation of the Crotone forearc basin of northern Calabria. The integrated calcareous plankton biostratigraphy indicates early Pliocene (Zanclean) to late early Pleistocene (Calabrian) ages for 29 successful paleomagnetic sites and/or sections. Unexpectedly, four domains undergoing distinct rotations are documented. Two blocks have undergone a CW rotation statistically undistinguishable, for both timing and magnitude, from the rigid Calabria rotation documented in the past. Two additional ~10-km-wide blocks yielded a 30.8 ± 22.5 and 32.0 ± 9.2 post–1.2 Ma counterclockwise rotation, likely due to left-lateral shear along two NW-SE fault zones. We infer that since advanced early Pleistocene times, after the end of the uniform CW rotation, left-lateral strike-slip tectonics disrupted the Calabria terrane, overwhelming a widespread extensional regime accompanying the Calabria drift since late Miocene times. Seismological evidence reveals that only the southern part of the Ionian slab subducting below Calabria is continuous, while beneath northern Calabria a slab window between 100 and 200 km depth is apparent. We suggest that the partial breakoff of the Ionian slab after 1 Ma induced the fragmentation of the Calabria wedge, and that strike-slip faults from the Crotone basin decoupled “inactive” northern Calabria from southern Calabria, still drifting towards the trench.

The Lower Pliocene succession of the Crotone Basin (Calabrian Arc, Southern Italy) is mainly comprised of blue-grey marly clay with good magnetic properties. Here the bio-magnetostratigraphic data indicate a mean sedimentation rate of about 12–15 cm/kyr. Around 3.7–3.6 Ma a major change in the sedimentation regime occurred: the blue-grey hemipelagic marls grade rapidly into silty marls with a significant increase in the terrigenous fraction and with abundant siliceous remains throughout the whole interval. Magnetic properties of these sediments are very poor, but an integrated calcareous plankton biostratigraphy (foraminifera and nannofossils) infers a high average sedimentation rate (about 50–60 cm/kyr). The abrupt onset of this sedimentation regime in the Crotone Basin is contemporaneous with a major unconformity already recognized in the northern sector of the basin, part of amajor reorganization phase in the whole Apenninic–Maghrebid Chain known as “Globorotalia puncticulata event”. Reports of coeval siliceous sediments in other marginal basins of the Apennines (Southern Calabria, Southern and Northern Apennines) suggest that this “siliceous event” might have been regionally extensive, having important palaeoceanographical implications.We infer that the “siliceous event” is characterized by a combined tectonic- and climate-induced change in palaeoceanographic conditions. The tectonic triggering factors may have been linked to two synchronous events in the Tyrrhenian–Apennine system: 1) the shortening event also known as “G. puncticulata event”, and 2) the coeval opening of the Vavilov Basin in the Tyrrhenian Sea which yielded profound influences in terms of physiography and characteristics of the Crotone Basin. The consequent uplift of the Southern Apennines would have increased sediment supply and availability of silica, resulting in eutrophication and enhanced silica preservation. Strong winter mixing and possibly upwelling conditions could have increased primary productivity during heavy isotope stages Gi4, Gi2 and MG8, at the onset of the “siliceous event”. This important event, lasting from ca. 3.6 Ma to ca. 3.2 Ma, would have recorded a peculiar transitional period before further climatic deterioration and more drastic palaeoceanographic changes occurred around 3.1 Ma, leading to cyclic sapropel deposition in the whole of the Mediterranean sea.