Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Marine and Petroleum Geology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpetgeo Review article Sedimentology and stratigraphy of the Neogene rift-type North Croatian Basin (Pannonian Basin System, Croatia): A review Davor Pavelić a,* , Marijan Kovačić b a University of Zagreb, Faculty of Mining, Geology and Petroleum Engineering, Pierottijeva 6, HR-10000, Zagreb, Croatia b University of Zagreb, Faculty of Science, Horvatovac 95, HR-10000, Zagreb, Croatia ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Sedimentology Stratigraphy Neogene North Croatian Basin Pannonian Basin System Central Paratethys ABSTRACT Development of the rift-type North Croatian Basin located in the south-western Neogene Pannonian Basin System and belonging to the Central Paratethys realm, was controlled by tectonics, climate, volcanic activity and eustatic fluctuations. The extrabasinal controls produced a succession of depositional environments from ter- restrial to marine, and back to terrestrial, and the deposits form a large-scale transgressive-regressive cycle. Basin evolution is subdivided into the syn-rift phase which lasted from the Early Miocene (Ottnangian) until the Middle Miocene (middle Badenian), and in the post-rift phase from the Middle Miocene (late Badenian) to the Quaternary. These complex controls on deposition generated the opening and closing of connections to the open sea that occasionally resulted in the formation of unfossiliferous continental deposits, or generated the radiation of endemic species, such that it has been necessary to use regional Neogene stages for stratigraphic analysis of the Central Paratethys history. Earlier stratigraphic studies of the North Croatian Basin, that had been primarily based on biostratigraphy and superposition, were improved by recent results yielded from radiometric dating, and integrated biostratigraphy. They have been focused mainly on the Early/Middle Miocene and the Miocene/ Pliocene boundaries that separate intervals of the specific depositional evolution of the basin. Most important depositional and palaeogeographic differences concern a relatively long period of development of the early continental phase that lasted from the Ottnangian to the early Badenian. In contrast to parts of the Pannonian Basin System characterized by marine deposition in the early Badenian, the NCB was characterized by long-lived fresh-water lacustrine deposition. The fresh-water Lake Slavonia that developed from the middle Pliocene to the early Pleistocene, indicates an independent phase of evolution of the south Pannonian Basin System, so the Cernikian regional stage was introduced for the lacustrine succession. Those stratigraphic and palaeogeographic differences additionally support the complexity of the Pannonian Basin System within the Central Paratethys realm supporting heterogeneous depositional development of continental rift-type basins. 1. Introduction The North Croatian Basin (NCB) represents a south-western part of the back-arc Pannonian Basin System (PBS), the formation of which commenced in the Early Miocene generated by continental collision and subduction of the Euroasian Plate beneath the Pannonian crustal fragment. Its development is subdivided into two succesive phases: syn- rift and post-rift. The syn-rift phase of basin evolution was marked by the asthenosphere rising, extensional tectonic thinning of the crust and isostatic subsidence, while the post-rift phase was characterized by basin subsidence due to cooling of the lithosphere (Royden, 1988; Tari et al., 1992). The development was complex and heterogeneous as re- flected in the individual evolution of several sub-basins, and the dif- ferent and debatable stratigraphic positions of the boundary between syn-rift and post-rift deposits (Fig. 1) (e.g. Ebner and Sachsenhofer, 1995; Horváth, 1995; Fodor et al., 1999; Tari et al., 1999; Cloetingh et al., 2005; Corver et al., 2009; Horváth et al., 2015; Radivojević and Rundić, 2016). In the SE part of the PBS, the extensional tectonics were diachronous across the basin and migrated in time and space from ∼28 Ma near the Dinarides to 8–5.5 Ma to the NE and E (Matenco and Radivojević, 2012; Balázs, 2017). After the separation of the Western Tethys Ocean into the Paratethys Sea and the Mediterranean Sea around the Eocene- Oligocene boundary (Rögl, 1999), a large area of north Croatia became land. Sedimentation continued in the Oligocene only in north-western Croatia (Fig. 1). During the Miocene, a marine connection between the Central Paratethys that includes the Eastern Alpine - Carpathian Fore- land basins from Eastern Bavaria to Moldavia, and the Pannonian Basin https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2018.01.026 Received 2 November 2017; Received in revised form 19 January 2018; Accepted 21 January 2018 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: dpavelic@rgn.hr (D. Pavelić). Marine and Petroleum Geology 91 (2018) 455–469 0264-8172/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T