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An up to 1500 m-thick clastic succession, the late Zanclean Baronia Synthem, has been analysed in detail in the Ariano wedge-top Basin (southern Apennine, Italy). In the Baronia Mountains the studied sediments are well exposed and laterally mappable due to young uplift and exhumation and rest unconformably on a complexly deformed pre-Pliocene substratum formed by Triassic to Miocene allochthonous units. The Baronia Synthem has been resolved into seven facies associations that are representative of distinct fluvial, deltaic, nearshore and offshore depositional environments and can be grouped into lowstand, transgressive, and highstand systems tracts. Using an integrated approach comprising original geological field mapping at 1:10,000 scale, conventional sedimentary facies analysis and a sequence stratigraphic approach, this paper provides a detailed description and interpretation of facies associations and new insights on the stratigraphic architecture and the geological history of this portion of the basin fill. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Examples of slope channels and canyons being diverted by structurally related sea-floor topography are commonly found both on the modern seabed and in the subsurface, in deep-water fold and thrust belts but their depositional histories have rarely been documented using examples from outcrop. The synthesis of outcrop (original geological field mapping at 1:10,000 scale) and subsurface data sets from the early Pleistocene stratigraphic succession of the Peri-Adriatic basin provides a window into the overall evolutionary pattern of large intraslope turbidite systems that, during the Gelasian (2.58–1.80 Ma), shed Apennine-derived clastic sediments into the adjacent deep-water basin. Trends from mapping and paleocurrent indicators converge to indicate that the sea-floor bathymetric expression of a thrust-related anticline, the north-trending Jesi-Nereto-Zaccheo structure, likely influenced the downslope transport direction of gravity flows and sediment dispersal pattern. During early and middle Gelasian time, coarse-grained turbidite deposition occurred on the western flank of the intraslope anticline by westerly sourced, northward-flowing turbidity currents, indicating that the opposing sea-floor topography was sufficient to cause the diversion of turbidite systems, forcing them to travel near parallel to the east-facing regional paleoslope for significant distances. By very late Gelasian time, the intraslope accommodation space on the western flank of the anticline had filled and turbidites were dispersed through dip-oriented conduits incising across the crest of the underlying structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]