Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Marine and Petroleum Geology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpetgeo Research paper New insights on the Adria plate geodynamics from the northern Adriatic perspective Giuliano Brancolini a,* , Dario Civile a , Federica Donda a , Luigi Tosi b , Massimo Zecchin a , Valentina Volpi a , Giuliana Rossi a , Denis Sandron a , Giulia Matilde Ferrante a , Edy Forlin a a Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e Geofisica Applicata - OGS, Borgo Grotta Gigante 42/c, 34010 Sgonico, Trieste, Italy b Istituto di Geoscienze e Georisorse-IGG-CNR, Via G. Gradenigo 6, 35131 Padova, Italy ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Northern Adriatic Adria plate Subduction Apennine foredeep Multichannel seismics ABSTRACT The interpretation of approximately 1300 km of multichannel seismic data, acquired in the northern Adriatic Sea, revealed that the Apennine foredeep in the northern Adriatic does not show any evidence of tilting since Early Pliocene, suggesting that slab retreat cannot be the geodynamic driving force for the northern Adriatic subsidence and for the northern Apennine kinematic since that time. Moreover, the presence of two fault systems that developed since the Pliocene indicates that the northern Adriatic underwent intraplate deformation during the Plio-Pleistocene. These considerations suggest that, since Early Pliocene, subduction below the northern Apennine ceased, and that the Adria Plate movements were mainly driven by the kinematics of the adjacent plates, particularly by the Nubia-Europe convergence. At present, on the basis of the foredeep setting, four distinct sectors can be recognized in the Adriatic foreland: Po Plain, northern, central and southern Adriatic, separated by major tectonic lineaments. The northern Adriatic differs from the two adjoining sectors because its foredeep deposits are still well preserved. In the Po Plain in fact, the Adriatic foredeep is almost totally in- corporated into the Alpine and Apennine chains while in the central Adriatic, it is affected by a considerable intraplate deformation (e.g. the Mid Adriatic Ridge). In this framework, the northern Adriatic region may be regarded as a triangular shaped sector indented below the Southern Alps to the north and the northern Dinarides to the north-east and bounded to the west by the Schio-Vicenza fault system and to the south-east by the Kvarner fault. 1. Introduction The northern Adriatic region, which includes the northern Adriatic Sea and the Friuli-Veneto Plain, is part of the Adria Plate, which re- presents the relatively stable foreland of the surrounding Apennine- Alpine-Dinaric orogenic belts. Due to its key role in the Mediterranean geodynamic evolution, the Adria Plate has been largely investigated, mainly to understand the relationships with the complex system of orogenic belts developed along its borders. Despite the huge amount of studies, many questions on the geody- namics of the Adria Plate are still unsolved, particularly the post- Miocene interaction, along its western margin, between the Adria Plate and the Apennine chain. In fact, almost all the geodynamic processes involving active margins have been suggested to take place here, in- cluding continental subduction with slab retreat (Selvaggi and Amato, 1992; Carminati et al. 2003, 2012; Devoti et al. 2008, 2011; Rosenbaum and Lister, 2004), delamination retreat (Chiarabba et al., 2014), lithospheric buckling (Bertotti et al., 2001), passive response to the kinematics of the surrounding plates, mainly Nubia and Anatolia (Mantovani et al., 2015) and either a passive or an active plume-related rifting (Lavecchia and Creati, 2006). At the origin of these different models are the controversial presence and role of a west-dipping Adria slab below the Apennines. In fact, except for the Calabrian Arc (southern Italy), deep earthquakes are absent along the whole Apennine chain, and seismic tomography images are not unequivocally inter- preted (Scafidi and Solarino, 2012). The northern Adriatic region is an essential piece in the puzzle of the Adria Plate geodynamics but, due to the lack of data, it is also the less studied. Although stratigraphic information is available from many industrial wells, multichannel seismic data were limited to only two profiles, i.e., CROP M-18 and M-17. Recent multichannel seismic sur- veys carried out by OGS, integrated with onshore surveys (ENI cour- tesy) and with borehole data (Fig. 1), allowed to reconstruct the structural setting of the northern Adriatic region. Moreover, they https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpetgeo.2019.06.049 Received 4 April 2019; Received in revised form 24 June 2019; Accepted 26 June 2019 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: giuliano.brancolini@libero.it, dcvile@inogs.it (G. Brancolini). Marine and Petroleum Geology 109 (2019) 687–697 Available online 27 June 2019 0264-8172/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T