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Abstract The outer Adriatic zones of the central Apennines (Italy) provide good conditions for analysing geometry and kinematics of the earliest normal faults, superposed onto the thrust belt. During the latest stages of thrusting onto the Adriatic foreland (late Pliocene–early Pleistocene), the outermost imbricates of the thrust belt were subjected to normal faulting, coeval with differential uplift. Crosscutting normal faults get younger towards the foreland, thus the easternmost normal faults record the latest stages of fault propagation and growth. The Caramanico fault, on the western flank of Mt. Maiella, is the largest outcropping normal fault of the outer zones. This high-angle fault (dip > 70°) has cumulative offsets ≤ €4.2 km, and propagated with slip rates of 2.6 mm/year in a short time interval (≤ 1.6 Ma), concomitant with intense uplift of Mt. Maiella. In contrast with normal faults in a more internal position, the Caramanico fault maintains a high-angle planar geometry, and does not reach the major basal detachment of the thrust belt. Thus the fault did not cause large extensional displacements; its major role was rather to accommodate ongoing components of vertical uplift of the overthickened thrust wedge. Downfaulting of the thrust belt on the western flank of Mt. Maiella represents the youngest end member of the same processes that have operated since 11 Ma in the Tyrrhenian hinterland, where large extensional strains and crustal thinning of the orogenic belt were achieved by long-lasting activity of listric normal faults detached at lower crustal depths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]