Stratigraphic, magmatic and structural features of Ordovician tectonics in Sardinia (Italy): a review

The Variscan Palaeozoic successions exposed in Sardinia show clear evidences of tectonic instability during Ordovician times. In the Foreland zone (SW Sardinia), the Cambrian to lower Ordovician strata are folded giving way to an angular unconformity sealed by a Middle-Upper Ordovician syn-tectonic succession, characterized at the base by a thick conglomeratic deposit. This is indicative of a tectonic-driven uplift, followed by intensive erosion. A time-equivalent angular unconformity, sealed by Middle Ordovician volcano-sedimentary complexes, is also recorded in the External nappe zone (central–southern Sardinia). These volcanic products became rare toward NE and approaching the Inner zone, where few remnants of Ordovician magmatic rocks consist of the protoliths of small bodies of calc-alkaline orthogneisses and metabasites. Paleogeographic reconstructions generally assume that Sardinia formed a coherent crustal block since the late Cambrian; therefore, the SW–NE trend of magmatic and sedimentary features observed in the Ordovician successions has been interpreted as sequential snapshots captured along an Ordovician volcanic arc. Stratigraphic and paleontological data, sediment provenance and petro-chronology of magmatic products indicate that the Ordovician successions could have belonged to different, and possibly far paleogeographic domains. These data suggest that the actual zonation of the Palaeozoic basement of Sardinia is a puzzle resulting from extensive crustal reworking and amalgamation in Variscan times. Hence it cannot be directly referred to an Ordovician paleogeography.