The composite framework of the southern sector of the Calabria-Peloritani Orogen

The Calabrian orogenic segment is mostly constituted by remnants of the original southern European Hercynian chain (Fig.1a) reworked during the Alpine-Apennine orogeny, which locally generated exclusive Alpine metamorphic complexes as well as weakly to pervasively overprinted basement blocks (Fig.1b). This evolution led to the formation of a composite terrane (i.e. Calabride Composite Terrane - CCT) constituted by basement rocks presently merged in several Hercynian or possibly older sub-terranes, locally overprinted by the different stages of the Alpine metamorphic cycle (Pezzino et al., 2008). In this scenario, several questions are still debated about the geodynamic history of this southern Alpine sector chain such as the unclear correlation between Northern- and Southern- Calabride Composite Terranes (Fig.1b). The former is characterised by Europe- and Africa-verging tectonic transport and by the presence of Alpine ophiolitic units, while the latter by an exclusive Africa-verging tectonic transport and by the absence of ophiolitic units. Furthermore, up to now, available data have not allowed any reliable correlation among the various tectonic units which compose the Southern Calabride Composite Terrane (SCCT) (Fig.1c,d), as revealed by the PT trajectories of the constituting tectono-metamorphic units (Fig.1e-i). The present contribution has the aim to compare the tectono-metamorphic evolution of the Serre and Aspromonte Massifs, presently juxtaposed within the present-day framework of the SCCT (Fig.1c,d).