Ricerc@Sapienza

The Eocene-Oligocene transition represents the latest greenhouse-icehouse shift faced by Earth, a major global climate change associated with carbon cycle perturbation. In this paper, we investigate the Massignano stratigraphic section (northern Apennines, Italy), GSSP of the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, by X-ray diffraction analysis of clay minerals and carbon and oxygen stable isotopes to explore the link among climate, paleoweathering and runoff, and carbon cycle in the Neotethys across this major climatic transition.

Wedge-top basins can provide highly sensitive information on the uplift and erosion history of an evolving collisional belt, but their burial and thermal history has generally been neglected because their siliciclastic infill records the very low temperature history, which is difficult to detect. This paper provides an integrated approach for defining the first order tectonic events shaping the southern Apennines in Neogene times through the study of a wedge-top basin.