Title

Accretion tectonics of the Neotethyan Ermioni Complex, Peloponessos, Greece

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-1-1996

Abstract

Late Cretaceous-Early Tertiary terrigenous and calcareous turbidites exposed in the Argolis Peninsula of southern Greece represent an accretionary complex assembled during the closure of a Late Cretaceous Neotethyan ocean. Massive sulphide bodies, thrust slices of cherts and serpentinized ultramafics are found imbricated within a tectonic stack of approximately 8 km thickness. Basalts with overlying Cenomanian-Maastrichtian pelagic limestones and metalliferous sediments are found distributed throughout the complex. The basalts give trace-element chemical signatures consistent with an origin at a mid-ocean ridge or back-arc basin. Folding and shearing is locally intense in fault zones 10-20 m across, resulting in a block-in-matrix fabric. Metamorphism within the complex is of low-to-high diagenetic grade, with grade generally increasing structurally up-section. Palaeo-slope indicators suggest that the ocean basin lay to the present SE. The SSW to NNE emplacement is at variance with the SW-vergent Early Tertiary thrusting of the Hellenides, and may be explicable in terms of transpressional tectonics along the southeastern termination of the Pelagonian micro-continent. The processes which assembled the Ermioni Complex appear to have operated in a similar fashion to those seen along the margins of major ocean basins, although active over much shorter periods of time.

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

Journal of the Geological Society

First Page

745

Last Page

757

This document is currently not available here.

COinS