ABSTRACT Final closure of the Neotethys Ocean basin along the Eurasian margin in southeastern Europe during Eocene–Oligocene time was accompanied by upper-crustal extension expressed as a series of low-angle detachments, basins bounded by normal faults, and volcanism. This extensional belt spanned the southern Balkan Peninsula from the Albanides along the southern Adriatic coast in the west to western Anatolia in the east. Despite the widespread occurrence of this phenomenon within the southern Balkan region, similar extension has not previously been observed in association with the Neotethys closure in the Dinarides, which form the western geographic continuation of this orogenic belt, ending in the Austrian Alps in the northwest. The Mid- Bosnian Schist Mountains are a fault-bounded body of greenschist-facies metamorphic rocks located along the paleogeographic margin of the present-day Adria continental block in the Internal Dinarides. We combine low-temperature thermochronometric ages with field observations of kinematic shear sense indicators and demonstrate that the Mid- Bosnian Schist Mountains were exhumed along a normal fault between 43 and 27.5 Ma. The most rapid cooling occurred between ca. 35 and 27 Ma, coincident with a regional-scale magmatic event. These data constitute the first evidence for major extension in the Dinarides contemporaneous with collision between Adria and the Eurasian margin, and they are consistent with removal of a subducting slab during the transition between oceanic subduction and continental collision.

Movement of the Adria microplate is one of the main elements for understanding crustal deformations in the central Mediterranean and central Europe. To study present-day tectonics in Adria and the nature of its boundary relative to those of the Africa and Eurasia plates, three GPS (Global Positioning System) campaigns involving 41 stations were carried out within CRODYN (the Croatian and Slovene Geodynamic Network). Movement of stations derived in the International Terrestrial Reference Frame 1996 (ITRF96) with respect to the permanent ITRF/IGS (International GPS Service) station GRAZ in Austria, located north of the network, and values of the principal strain rates determined on the basis of analytical surface deformation theory suggest that Adria is divided into three different deformation zones (northern, central, and southern). The domain of northeastern Italy moves 5 mm/yr in an east-northeast direction. The stations in southwestern Slovenia move 3–7 mm/yr in a north-northwest direction, whereas those in southern and northeastern Istria move 4–5 mm/yr in a more easterly direction. The greatest movement (8–10 mm/yr) occurs in central Adria between the Gargano zone and the central Dinarides; there, the movement is northeast-oriented. A fragmentation of Adria into subblocks linking the Gragano zone to the central Dinarides cannot be clearly demonstrated. The southeastern part of Adria, along the coastline of Albania, moves 5–7 mm/yr in an almost east-west direction, and eastern Albania moves 6 mm/yr in an east-southeast direction. The permanent ITRF/IGS stations POTS and WTZR in Germany, BOR1 in Poland, and PENC in Hungary demonstrate no significant movement. The movement of the stations discussed here differs very clearly from the known north-west motion of the Africa plate and suggests that Adria is an independent microplate.