Inner vs. outer wedge-top depozone “sequences” in the Late Miocene (late Tortonian–early Messinian) Sicilian Foreland Basin System; new data from the Terravecchia Formation of NW Sicily

The wedge-top depozone belongs to the innermost portion of a Foreland Basin System (FBS) (DeCelles and Giles, 1996) and includes all sediments, typically coarse-grained proximal facies, that bury the active frontal part of a fold and thrust belt. The Terravecchia Formation (Flores, 1959, Schmidt Di Friedberg, 1962, Schmidt Di Friedberg, 1964 and Catalano, 1979) is a composite lithostratigraphic unit widespread in Sicily (southern Italy) which has been recently considered (Gugliotta, 2010) as a part of the stratigraphic record of the Late Miocene (late Tortonian to early Messinian) Sicilian wedge-top depozone and represent the main object of this paper. Two end-member wedge-top “sequences” the (i) the inner wedge-top sequence (IWS) and (ii) the outer wedge-top sequence (OWS), respectively, were recognized in the Terravecchia Formation outcropping in different sectors of NW Sicily and here described and compared on the base of both their depositional and deformative pattern. The differences existing between the IWS and OWS clearly reflect the tectono-depositional evolution of sedimentary basins located at different position across the wedge-top depozone. The more coarse grained and IWS was deposited filling narrow and often oversupplied basins located in the inner sectors of the wedge-top depozone. In these basins the sedimentary evolution has been strongly controlled by a syn-sedimentary transpressional tectonics which produced, since the late Tortonian, the development of “local scale” intraformational angular unconformities. Contemporaneously, the more fine-grained OWS was deposited filling relatively wide and mainly shallow-water marine basins, probably open to major marine areas, located in a less external position of the wedge-top depozone. In these external areas during the late Tortonian–early Messinian the transpressional tectonics was active but still confined to the deeper structural layers producing long wavelength deformation and “basin-scale” unconformities. Integrating all data an alternative tectono-depositional model of the Sicilian Late Miocene Foreland Basin System has been outlined. The model here presented substantially differs from those previously known from other authors and shows a complex wedge-top depozone articulated in a “inner” and “outer” sector whose evolution has been driven by the progressive activation of deep-seated structures.

► Late Miocene Terravecchia Formation has been studied in different sectors of Sicily.
► Two end member wedge-top sequences were identified IWS and OWS.
► These sequences were developed respectively in the inner and outer wedge-top depozone.
► The IWS recorded a local-scale syn-depositional tectonics during the latest Tortonian.
► The inner wedge-top depozone is deformed by principally NW- and N-ward-directed faults.