Using high-resolution stratigraphy and structural analysis to constrain polyphase tectonics in wedge-top basins: Inferences from the late Tortonian Scillato Basin (central-northern Sicily)

Abstract The present paper aims to show, both from a stratigraphic and structural points of view, the main features of a wedge-top syntectonic basin which evolved recording polyphase and non-coaxial tectonics. The study area is the Scillato Basin ( SB ), a roughly N–S-oriented structural depression located in the central-northern sector of the Sicililian Maghrebides. There, an approximately 1300 m-thick upper Serravallian to upper Tortonian succession of clastic units outcrops as a portion of the Neogene syntectonic covers of the Sicilian fold and thrust belt. Within the outcropping succession the upper Tortonian Terravecchia Fm represents the main topic of this paper. A multidisciplinary approach was carried out through an integration of sedimentology, facies, stratal pattern and structural analyses; this was applied to the formation enabling one to recognize in the Scillato Basin a fining to coarsening upward succession, deposited recording an early transgressive and a late regressive depositional stage. In our model these two main depositional stages developed and are directly relatable to a two-step structural evolution of the basin. During the first step, a NW–SE-oriented structural depression existed, enclosed between structural highs and accommodating the lower and middle portion of the upper Tortonian succession. Subsequently, during the second step, the NW–SE depression was non-coaxially deformed by superimposition of high-angle transpressive faults (many of which were SE-dipping), developed in response to the upward propagation of structures enucleated at deeper structural levels. This step was recorded in the basin by development of both depositional and structural interferences recognizable along the upper portion of the Scillato Basin succession. A comparison between field data and deep geophysical data interpreted at the preliminary stage, raises questions about the late Miocene geological evolution of this sector of the Sicilian chain, including: (i) the syn-tectonic deposition of the Terravecchia Fm. in the Scillato Basin clearly recorded the interference of two main and non-coaxial tectonic events; (ii) the younger of these two events has a clear tranpressional character and was active during the very late Tortonian; (iii) as also indicated by many authors in neighboring orogenic wedges, the main control on the location, geometry and depositional evolution of the Scillato wedge-top Basin was carried out by compressional and transpressional structures developed at a deeper structural level. Their deformation propagated upward both into the shallow structural level and sedimentary covers; therefore (iv) the late Miocene structural scenario here depicted is not consistent either with the back-arc-related extension or with the late orogenic gravitational collapse models previously invoked by other authors with regard to this sector of the Sicilian thrust belt.