Permian clockwise rotations of the Ebro and Corso-Sardinian blocks during Iberian-Armorican oroclinal bending: Preliminary paleomagnetic data from the Catalan Coastal Range (NE Spain)

- Paleomagnetic results of Permian dykes from the Catalan Ranges are presented.
- They are in favor of two successive clockwise rotations of the CCR in the Permian.
- The rotations concern the whole Maures-Corsica-Sardinia-Ebro block assemblage.
- The rotations participate to the closure of the northern limb of Ibero-Armorican Arc.

Paleomagnetic investigations of Early Permian and Triassic magmatic rocks from Catalan Coastal Ranges provide three magnetic directions which are interpreted as primary magnetizations and partly as overprints. The succession of magnetic directions is interpreted in terms of a succession of large-scale clockwise rotations, which bring the whole assembly of Pyrenees, Catalonia, Corsica-Sardinia and Maures-Esterel massifs from the southeast of the Massif Central to the west during Permian. This major movement is associated with clockwise rotation of northern limb of the Iberian orocline during Latest Carboniferous and Early Permian (~ 305-290 Ma). Subsequently, Permian large-scale dextral transtensional-extensional shearing operated along Aquitanian Shear Belt between the Massif Central in the northeast and the Iberian Variscan massifs in the southwest. The latest phase of the rotation in the Late Permian-Early Triassic is associated with alkaline magmatism probably linked to Neo-Tethys opening activity in Western Europe.