Permian-Cenozoic deep-water carbonate rocks of the Southern Tethyan Domain. The case of Central Sicily

摘要

We present an integrated stratigraphy of the outcropping and\udburied Permian-Cenozoic deep-water carbonate successions, forming\udsome of the tectonic units mostly buried beneath the Late Neogene\udsedimentary cover in the fold and thrust belt of Central Sicily.\udThree main successions, pertaining to the well known Lercara,\udImerese and Sicanian domains, have been reconstructed on the basis\udof a detailed facies analysis, seismostratigraphic interpretation, bio -\udstratigraphy (mostly based on palynological data) and comparison\udbetween outcropping and subsurface deep-water sediments.\udThe main results reveal a continuous sedimentation of the deepwater\udSouthern Tethyan Sicilian succession since the Permian to\udCenozoic. In detail: a) the Permian-Middle Triassic terrigenous and\udcarbonate deep-water successions, outcropping or buried in the\udCerda, Lercara-Roccapalumba and Sosio Valley regions, are well\udcomparable to each other and represent the common substrate of\udthe Mesozoic-Paleogene Imerese and Sicanian carbonate successions;\udb) the Mesozoic-Paleogene deep-water carbonates, when compared\udamong them, reveal the occurrence of different sedimentary\udsuccessions (Imerese and Sicanian); c) the Oligo-Miocene foreland\udbasin terrigenous sediments (Numidian flysch) clearly differ from\udthe coeval foreland pelagic to open-shelf carbonates.\udThe paleogeographic reconstruction envisages: a) during the\udPermian-Triassic, a wide subsident continental rifting area, bordered\udby a shallow-water domain periodically supplying the basin with calciturbiditic\udto gravity flows sedimentation (rift stage of the Southern\udTethyan margin); b) during the Jurassic-Paleogene, two different\uddeep-water basins developed in a context of a post-rift stage. The different\udsedimentation reflects the location of the Imerese and Sica -\udnian basins, respectively, along adjacent rimmed shelf and stepped\udcarbonate platform margins.