250 Million Years of Earth History in Central Italy: Celebrating 25 Years of the Geological Observatory of Coldigioco

Central Italy has been a cradle of geology for centuries. For more than 100 years, studies at the Umbria and Marche Apennines have led to new ideas and a better understanding of the past, such as the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary event, or the events across the Eocene-Oligocene transition from a greenhouse to an icehouse world. The Umbria-Marche Apennines are entirely made of marine sedimentary rocks, representing a continuous record of the geotectonic evolution of an epeiric sea from the Early Triassic to the Pleistocene. The book includes reviews and original research works accomplished with the support of the Geological Observatory of Coldigioco, an independent research and educational center, which was founded in an abandoned medieval hamlet near Apiro in 1992.
Late Pleistocene tectonic tilting of the Frasassi anticline from offset stalagmites in the Grotta Grande del Vento (Marche, Italy)
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Published:September 11, 2019
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CiteCitation
David Bice, Michael Lacroce, David McGee, Alessandro Montanari, 2019. "Late Pleistocene tectonic tilting of the Frasassi anticline from offset stalagmites in the Grotta Grande del Vento (Marche, Italy)", 250 Million Years of Earth History in Central Italy: Celebrating 25 Years of the Geological Observatory of Coldigioco, Christian Koeberl, David M. Bice
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ABSTRACT
The massive Jurassic limestone making up the core of the Frasassi-Valmontagnana blind thrust anticline hosts a large sulfidic cave complex, which, due to Pleistocene tectonic uplift, has been incised by the Sentino River, forming the deep Frasassi Gorge. The Frasassi cave complex is organized into seven horizontal levels, with the youngest and presently active one at river level, and the oldest (ca. 1.2 Ma) one some 200 m above the Sentino River. Therefore, the Frasassi cave complex records the river incision history of this still-active Apennine mountain belt. In addition to an uplift rate of ~0.55 mm/yr for the...
- caves
- Cenozoic
- deformation
- Europe
- faults
- Italy
- kinematics
- Marches Italy
- oblique-slip faults
- Pleistocene
- Quaternary
- solution features
- Southern Europe
- speleothems
- stalagmites
- tectonics
- tilt
- Umbria Italy
- uplifts
- upper Pleistocene
- Frasassi Cave
- Grotta Grande del Vento
- Sentino River
- Frasassi-Valmontagnana Anticline