Madonie Mts. and Caltanissetta basin

The field trip has the aim of illustrating the structural setting of the Sicilian chain and its deformed outcropping foreland. Correlations between outcropping and buried structures have been performed by means the available AGIP deep seismic lines. The field trip provides new insights into the deep structures of the Sicilian chain, their geometric relationship and the kinematic evolution of the chain - foreland system growing as an accretionary wegde, mainly made up of basinal mesocenozoic carbonate thrust thrusts sheets, overriding a 10 km thick carbonate platform thrust wedge. The three - days Field Trip has been developed along three regional transects, crossing western and central eastern Sicily, back and forth the chain to the foreland. The first day has been devoted to the fold and thrust belt outcropping in western Sicily, which stretches from the Tyrrhenian coast to southern Sicily. The second day has been deal with the western Sicily structure, from the deformed foreland characters and the emergence of Plio - Pleistocene thrust-top basin to the tightly - packed carbonate thrust units, cropping along the northern coast. The third day has been devoted to the well known Caltanisetta Basin, to visit a 2,5 Ma old thrust - top basin characterised at Capodarso by coastal deposits. Here, sequence stratigraphy and high - resolution biochronostratigraphy allow precise evaluations of the vertical absolute growth and growth rates relative to very short time intervals (Milankovitch cycles). Left this area and going north, the field trip approach the Madonie Mts, where 2000 metres above sea level shallow and deep sea carbonates outcrop.