Reply to: 'A late Pleistocene clockwise rotation phase of Zakynthos (Greece) and implications for the evolution of the western Aegean Arc'

Abstract

During the 80s, a number of seminal papers were published by the Gif-sur-Yvette group of Carlo Laj and co-workers, on the late Neogene palaeomagnetic rotations of the Aegean and, in particular, of the Aegean Arc system. These studies shed new light on the tectonic evolution of the region (e.g. [1,2]). Then, similar work on the Calabrian^ Sicilian arc system established that major tectonic rotations were of very young (middle Pleistocene) age [3], and it became clear to us that it was warranted to have a closer and more detailed look at the tectonic history of the Aegean Arc. In particular, the advent of more accurate, astronomically calibrated time scales during the 90s provided the opportunity to correlate tectonic (or other, e.g. climatic) events over a large geographical area, and to constrain their age and duration and hence their (a)synchrony. This would aid in testing a dynamical model of subduction- related geodynamics of the (central) Mediterranean area [4]. Many studies, e.g. on numerical modelling of stress patterns, tomography, vertical motions and depot centre migration, and on tectonostratigraphy, have aided in testing this hypothesis (see [5] for references). Meanwhile, the accurate time control has provided increasing evidence for relatively short periods of rapid, pulsed tectonic rotations (see [5] for references and discussion). This is in contrast to a more continuous deformation over a longer time interval, as was earlier suggested by Laj et al. [1] for the western Aegean Arc.