View article

The Lower Pliocene succession of the Crotone Basin (Calabrian Arc, Southern Italy) is mainly comprised of blue-grey marly clay with good magnetic properties. Here the bio-magnetostratigraphic data indicate a mean sedimentation rate of about 12–15 cm/kyr. Around 3.7–3.6 Ma a major change in the sedimentation regime occurred: the blue-grey hemipelagic marls grade rapidly into silty marls with a significant increase in the terrigenous fraction and with abundant siliceous remains throughout the whole interval. Magnetic properties of these sediments are very poor, but an integrated calcareous plankton biostratigraphy (foraminifera and nannofossils) infers a high average sedimentation rate (about 50–60 cm/kyr). The abrupt onset of this sedimentation regime in the Crotone Basin is contemporaneous with a major unconformity already recognized in the northern sector of the basin, part of a major reorganization …