A Geological Itinerary Through the Southern Apennine Thrust Belt (Basilicata—Southern Italy)

The proposed geological itinerary connects a series of impressive outcrops distributed between the front and the inner portion of the Southern Apennine thrust belt. It offers the opportunity to visit some of the most interesting and best- exposed Southern Apennine geosites, inserted within land- scapes typical of the different sectors of the thrust belt, in order to illustrate its geological evolution. The itinerary has been designed in such a way as to intersect different stacked tecton- ic units and a great variety of sedimentary successions whose age ranges from Triassic to Pleistocene. Each of the chosen geosite contains multidisciplinary geological information that may be of interest for researchers, but may be also appreciated by a general public interested in geology. In particular, the stratigraphy, the structural geology and the geomorphology are the most recurrently treated topics. Most of these outcrops extend for many hundreds or thousands of metres and include villages or mountain reliefs. Therefore, every single site can be considered as an areal geosite containing particular geolog- ical features. However, the largest geosite can also be ob- served in a panoramic view from suitable locations. Thus, each of these sites provides different evidence and when com- bined together provides an opportunity to understand the com- plex geological history of the Southern Apennines. The moti- vation for establishing this itinerary mostly resides in the great * Giuseppe Palladino giuseppe.palladino@abdn.ac.uk scientific interest of the chosen outcrops; this will hopefully facilitate their conservation and the development of geotourism.