Paleomagnetic Evidence for Neogene Tectonic Rotations in the Northern Apennines

Paleomagnetic analysis was carried out in the northern Apennines on Eocene to Pliocene Epiligurian units. Five Early Miocene and two Middle Miocene sites yielded dual polarity site-mean directions which show signs of clustering after correction for bedding tilt. These likely primary magnetizations, in conjunction with data from the literature, give an overall mean Late Oligocene-Middle Miocene paleomagnetic pole which shows a large and significant counterclockwise rotation of 52° (± ≈8°) with respect to the Africa reference paleopoles (or a similar amount of rotation with respect to the coeval Europe reference paleopole). However, this paleopole falls close to the roughly coeval paleopole for Corsica-Sardinia, which is here calculated by averaging data from the literature. Three additional Early Miocene sites from an area west of Parma affected by Pliocene tectonics yielded site-mean directions which pass the fold test and are rotated counterclockwise by a lesser amount than the rest of the Miocene sites. Most of the remaining sites bear paleomagnetic directions acquired after tilting during a recent phase of remagnetization. We suggest that the large-scale rotation observed in the northern Apennines was associated with the motion of the Corsica-Sardinia block within the general context of the Africa-Europe relative motions. A compilation of published data from the central Apennines also shows a differential rotation of the northern relative to the southern Umbria belt which occurred after the motion of Corsica-Sardinia and may have been due to pivoting of the northern Umbria belt against a deep-seated lineament during the non-rotational opening of the Tyrrhenian Sea.