Understanding paleomagnetic rotations in Sicily: thrust vs. strike-slipe tectonics

The paleomagnetic investigation of the western Sicily Maghrebian belt has revealed since the 1970s that large clockwise (CW) rotations up to 140° with respect to the Hyblean-African foreland occurred synchronous with Tertiary shortening of the chain. The observation that rotations decrease stepwise from internal to external tectono-stratigraphic units led in the 1990s to a widely accepted model postulating that rotational thrust-sheet emplaced during forward orogenic propagation. More recently, other authors suggested that CW rotations from Sicily are conversely the result of late orogenic dextral strike-slip tectonics. Here we report on a paleomagnetic investigation of 30 Jurassic-Eocene s…