Abstract The Neogene Crotone basin in eastern Calabria contains extensive Messinian evaporite deposits, including thick gypsarenite and halite. The halite deposit reaches a maximum thickness of c . 300 m and in some areas forms relatively small diapirs piercing late Messinian and Pliocene sediments. Halite is strongly modified by folding and recrystallization, but a few primary features are preserved. Four primary halite facies have been recognized: (a) banded halite consisting of folded white and dark bands deposited in a salt pan and/or saline mudflat; (b) white facies, massive halite containing anhydrite nodules, probably formed in a variably desiccating saline lake; (c) clear facies made up of a mosaic of large blocky halite crystals separated by mud, possibly the product of displacive halite growth in a saline mudflat; and (d) breccia facies, a product of dissolution of halite/mudstone/siltstone layers. Residual facies formed from halite dissolution are present as both weld and cap rocks. Weld rocks are thick, undeformed, and composed only of insoluble phases originally included in the salt, whereas cap rocks are thin, strongly sheared and include clasts from the cover rocks.

Abstract The aim of this study is to reconstruct the evolution of the Strongoli area, a critical sector of the Crotone Basin (Calabria, Southern Italy), where a thick Middle–Upper Pliocene marine succession is present. The Strongoli succession shows prominent changes in the sedimentary environment that are partly forced by tectonics. Major tectonostratigraphic events have been recognized that might correlate with spreading pulses in the back-arc Tyrrhenian Sea. In particular, we demonstrate that a dramatic basinal collapse at c. 2.3 Ma correlates with the so-called ‘Calabrian transgression’ Auctorum and is close in age to the oceanization of the Marsili Basin.