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292 R. Catalano et al./ Tectonophysics 260 l 1996) 291-323

that thrusting was in connection to westward subduc- land, partly buried by the nappe front on land and in
tion of the Adriatic and Ionian lithosphere below the the offshore Gela Basin;
Corsica-Sardinia block. Today, westward subduc-
tion is indicated by a north-dipping Benioff zone (c) a complex chain, thrust towards the east and
west of Calabria and the Apennines as deep as 400 southeast, locally more than 15 km thick, consisting
krn (Gasparini et al., 1982), and related calc-alkaline (from internai to external) of the Eastern Sardinian
volcanism north of Sicily in the Eolian Islands belt, the Kabilian-Calabrian belt and the Sicilian-
(Barberi et al., 1974). Subduction and thrusting are Maghrebian units (Fig. I).
contemporaneous with back-arc-type extension in the
Tyrrhenian Sea. Rifting processes started in the west- This paper aims to describe in detail the structure
ern Tyrrhenian sea in the late Tortonian migrating of this sector (excluding the Sardinian element) by
east-southeastwards and generating oceanic crust in using published and unpublished data collected by
two small districts (Kastens et al., 1988). the authors in Sicily and its offshore extensions. A
new reconstruction of the paleogeographic history
In this centrai sector of the Mediterranean, three since the Early Permian and a kinematic model of
main elements mark the collisional complex of Sicily the fold and thrust belt is attempted.
and its offshore continuation (Figs. l and 2):
2. Database
(a) a foreland area, outcropping in southeastern
Sicily and Iocated in the Sicily Channel; To illustrate the structure of the mainland of
Sicily we present a number of deep geologie profiles
(b) a Pliocene-Pleistocene northwest-dipping
foredeep formed along the northern side of the fore-

Tectonic map of the
Centra/ Mediterranean area

0 2. 3 Ds

Fig. l. Tectonic scheme of the centrai Mediterranean area showing: l = Corsica-Sardinia; 2 = Calabrian Are, Kabylians and "Internai"

Aysch sequence ophiolites; 3 = Maghrebian-Sicilian-Southern Apennine nappes and deformed foreland; 4 = foreland and mildly folded
foreland (Tunisia, Hyblean plateau, Apulia); 5 = areas with superimposed extension; 6 = Plio-Quaternary volcanoes.