Review on continental Permo-Carboniferous deposits in Italy

The paper presents a short, but up-to-date review of the late Paleozoic to Triassic continental deposits of a large part of Italy. These deposits generally crop out in northern Italy, from the Dolomites to the western Alps, in some central and maritime zones of Tuscany, and, much further south, in Calabria and NE Sicily. Since the tectonics of these regions are highly complex, the stratigraphic schemes drawn up in figures 2, 3 only show the most complete and significant lithological successions. From the results, it is worthy of note that the (late)-postHercynian continental sequences under discussion can generally be divided into two main tectonosedimentary cycles. The lower cycle consists both of alluvial-lacustrine siliciclastic deposits and of calcalkaline acidic-to-intermediate volcanic products. On the whole, this cycle ranges from Late Carboniferous to Late Permian times. In the Alps, the overlying cycles includes the well-known Verrucano-Val Gardena clastics, which are still Permian in age. However the Apenninic Verrucano is younger, generally pertaining to the Middle Triassic.