Saturday 30 July 2022 – 2:50 pm
Science, Ingv: Calabria was originally close to Spain and France
With magnetic probe techniques reconstruct motion
ROME, July 30 (askanews) – Thanks to the analysis of rock samples from the Silla massif in Calabria, paleomagnetic investigations have allowed us to confirm that Calabria’s “micro plate” up to 30 million years ago was united with the present-day regions of Provence (France) and Catalonia (Spain).
This is the result of “the first pre-Miocene palaeomagnetic data from a Calabrian mass document at 160° after the Late Jurassic of CCW rotation as a result of a left-lateral shear study along the Tethys Alps” conducted by a team of researchers from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology ( INGV) and was recently published in AGU’ Tectonics.
The so-called “Calabro Block” forms a small plate, a crustal mass that encompasses all of Calabria south of the Pollino National Park whose geological history is independent of that of the Apennine Range of which it is a part today.
The rocks that make up the Calabro block are very different from those in the neighboring Apennine and Maghrebid Ranges (found in Sicily). While the latter settled on the edge of the African continent and then was deformed to form the backbone of today’s Italian mountain ranges, the origin of the Calabro Massif rocks has long been a matter of debate. (continued)
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