Alpine tectono-metamorphic evolution of the Corsica basement

Abstract

The Alpine orogenic edifice of Corsica (northern Tyrrhenian Sea) offers the possibility to investigate the mode through which continental crust responds to the propagation of regional shortening at convergent plate margins. The geology of Corsica has been traditionally described as separating domains affected by the Alpine tectonism (Alpine Corsica) from those that did not experience the Alpine tectono-metamorphic overprint (Hercynian Corsica), but recent studies show that most of Hercynian Corsica was thermally reset in post-Eocene times, questioning this paradigm. The continental units formed at the expenses of the stretched continental margin of the European plate and consist of Hercynian granitoid basement rocks and cover sequences (Permian volcaniclastics and Mesozoic sedimentary successions). By integrating meso- and microstructural investigations with metamorphic thermobarometry and ⁴⁰Ar–³⁹Ar geochronology along three E–W trending structural transects running across the basement section exposed below the Alpine orogenic wedge, we document middle-late Eocene (c. 50–33 Ma) westward-verging syn-metamorphic (low-grade blueschist facies) thick-skinned, basement-involved thrusting. Significantly, crustal shortening in the continental basement predated of c. 15–10 Ma the subduction zone metamorphism in the oceanic-derived Schistes Lustrés Complex. When the P–T–t–deformation history as reconstructed from the Corsica basement is integrated with the regional scenario of the Alpine–Apennine orogeny, a tectonic reconstruction is proposed, which frames the Alpine orogeny in Corsica within the Apennine–Maghrebian subduction system in the retroside (retrowedge) of the Apennine orogenic wedge.