LITHOSPHERIC BULGES RECORDED BY REGIONAL UNCONFORMITIES - THE CASE OFMESOZOIC-TERTIARY APULIA

Cyclic shallow-water carbonate sequences in the Cretaceous of Southern Italy are punctuated by regional unconformities associated with bauxi tes and palaeokarst features. Direct and indirect evidence strongly su ggests that, despite their apparent plate interior position, tectonics rather than eustasy was responsible for subaerial exposure, long enou gh to form bauxites. In-plane stress-related lithospheric arching caus ed by orogenic deformation along the distant active margins of Apulia is invoked to explain the vertical stacking of a series of regional un conformities (one of them marked by bauxites) on land and under the se a. The case history of Apulian bauxites associated with a Turonian arc hing allows a first estimate of the duration of a stress-related 'dist ant' perturbation of a subsiding passive continental margin.