A transpressive crustal-scale dextral shear zone is documented in the Variscan Basement of northeastern Sardinia. It indicates the presence of a shear deformation parallel to the belt overprinting previous D1 structures related to nappe stacking and top-to-the-S and -SW thrusting. The L2 stretching lineation points to an orogen-parallel stretching and to a general change in the tectonic transport from D1 to D2. Phase D1 developed during initial frontal collision, whereas the D2 deformation was characterized by dextral shearing during the increasing curvature of the Ibero-Armorican arc. Transpressional deformation developed in a regime of decreasing pressure. It caused telescoping of the Barrovian isograds and the exhumation of the low- to medium-grade metamorphic rocks. In this sector of the Variscan belt, exhumation is due to continuing compression with an increasing component of horizontal displacement. The overall change of the shortening direction in a large sector of an orogenic belt, with the occurrence of increasing orogen-parallel displacement, may be regarded as a general mechanism affecting the exhumation of rocks and preventing the thickened collisional crust from undergoing a generalized gravitational collapse.

The heavy mineral distribution of the Palaeogene flysch deposits of the Ionian, Gavrovo–Tripolitza and Pindos zones of the Peloponnese has been systematically investigated. The Ionian zone is distinguished from the Gavrovo–Tripolitza zone by higher amounts of detrital chrome spinel. The Ionian and the western occurrences of the Gavrovo–Tripolitza flysch are comparable with the successions of the Greek mainland, whereas samples of the Gavrovo–Tripolitza flysch from central and eastern locations of the Peloponnese, which crop out in tectonic windows, are clearly distinct. On the basis of heavy mineral distribution, the Gavrovo–Tripolitza flysch of the central and eastern Peloponnese shows clear relationships to the metaflysch sediments exposed in the tectonic windows of Olympos and Ossa, in Thessaly, which have no relation to the Gavrovo flysch of the mainland. The Pindos flysch from the Peloponnese contains the same heavy mineral assemblages as the pre-Middle Eocene deposits of the mainland. Younger Pindos flysch sediments are not observed on the Peloponnese. The differences in heavy mineral distribution within the Gavrovo–Tripolitza flysch, between the western and eastern localities, can be explained by an intensive reworking of Pindos flysch during the tectonic progradation of the Pindos nappe onto its foreland basin.

Lamproite dykes that cross-cut Middle Jurassic Karoo-related flood basalts in Vestfjella, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, have been dated at 158.7±1.6 Ma by 40Ar/39 Ar incremental heating of phlogopite. Compared to most lamproites, these dykes are unusually low in SiO2 (40.09–40.18 wt%) and high in CaO (12.35–16.24 wt%) and P2O5 (3.03–3.81 wt%). They have broad affinities to spatially and temporally related group II kimberlites of southern Africa, but the geochemically closest correlatives are CaO- and P2O5-rich diopside madupitic lamproites from Leucite Hills, USA. The Kjakebeinet lamproites are notably high in incompatible elements, show negative initial εNd values (−6.0, −6.7) and positive initial εSr values (+14, +17) with TDM model ages of c. 1.1 Ga, and probably record melting of metasomatized subcontinental lithospheric mantle beneath western Dronning Maud Land. Their emplacement records the youngest recognized magmatic event in the region, coincides with the proposed second and final stage of Gondwana breakup between Africa and Antarctica, and may be associated with deep-seated coast-parallel strike-slip faulting in Dronning Maud Land. Survival of old, easily fusible lithospheric mantle material 20 Ma after the eruption of voluminous flood basalt magmas suggests that the latter were emplaced within narrow zones of lithospheric thinning and that the source of lamproites remained largely intact between these zones.

Thin, but laterally widespread, fallout ash tuff layers interbedded with complex fluviolacustrine successions of the Carboniferous–Permian late Variscan intermontane Saar–Nahe Basin in southwestern Germany provide important tephrostratigraphic markers in the purely continental depositional setting. The tuffs are rhyolitic to rhyodacitic and indicate geochemical affinities to Moldanubian Variscan S-type granitoids. The volcanic ashes are suggested to have been derived from the general region of the central and northern Black Forest (southwestern Germany) and the northern Vosges (eastern France) at 100–150 km distance south of the Saar–Nahe Basin. Six tuff beds from the Jeckenbach and Odernheim subformations (Meisenheim Formation, Glan Group) have been correlated within the basin over a distance of 50 km by mapping and whole-rock geochemical fingerprinting. In each subformation, three tuffs can be well distinguished using geochemical discriminant function analysis. Additional comparisons of trace and rare-earth element contents provide further criteria for the differentiation of individual tuff beds. These discriminations show that the tuffs have unique chemical fingerprints, probably reflecting differences in the original composition of the parent volcanic tephra. Thus, chemical differences between the tephrostratigraphic markers are geologically significant and provide a powerful tool for establishing tuff layer identification and correlation within the complex sedimentary sequence of the Saar–Nahe Basin. They also provide clues to the tectonomagmatic settings of the source volcanoes.

The timing of exhumation of metamorphic rocks and granitoids of the Niğde metamorphic dome, at the southern tip of the Central Anatolian Crystalline Complex, is a matter of debate. According to some authors, the metamorphic rocks are overlain nonconformably by a sedimentary sequence of late Maastrichtian to Late Palaeocene age. In contrast, other authors recently argued that the Niğde dome represents an extensional core complex of Oligocene–Early Miocene age, finally unroofed during late Miocene times. On the one hand, the results of our study contradict the latter interpretation. A sedimentary sequence of earliest Eocene to early Middle Eocene age nonconformably overlies the high-grade rocks of the Niğde dome on its southeastern flank. Pebbles from the metamorphic rocks are ubiquitous in the conglomerates of this sequence. As a result, the Niğde metamorphic rocks must have reached the surface before Eocene times, or at the very beginning of the Eocene at the latest. The Üçkapılı granite, whose crystallization age has been inferred to be Early Miocene, has intruded the metamorphic complex during exhumation. The granite is also found as pebbles within the conglomerates of the Eocene sedimentary sequence and, thus, is actually older than the Eocene. Apatite fission track dates of 12–11 Ma across the Niğde dome do not indicate that the metamorphic rocks were still on their way to the surface at that time; instead, they must reflect a later event, which is most probably heating during late Neogene magmatism. Lastly, there is no ductile-then-brittle extensional detachment in the two areas where it has been invoked, that is, on the western and southern flanks of the dome. An extensional detachment nevertheless exists at the top of the Niğde dome, best documented in its northern part, where the detachment fault superposes a superficial unit made up of massive ophiolitic rocks onto the high-grade metamorphic sequence. Field evidence indicates that this detachment developed before Eocene times. On the other hand, our observations do not confirm the nonconformity of the sedimentary sequence dated as late Maastrichtian–Late Palaeocene onto the Niğde high-grade rocks. Field relations show either a tectonic contact between the two, or the direct nonconformity of the Eocene sediments onto the metamorphic rocks. The lack of coarse clasts originating from the Niğde high-grade rocks within the Maastrichtian–Palaeocene sequence further suggests that the metamorphic dome did not reach the surface before Late Palaeocene times. These results compare well with available data from the north-western part of the Central Anatolian Crystalline Complex, suggesting that exhumation has been broadly synchronous on the scale of the massif, as a result of an episode of high magnitude extension that affected the region in Campanian to Palaeocene times.

Knowledge of the late Miocene–Pliocene climate of West Antarctica, recorded by sedimentary units within the James Ross Island Volcanic Group, is still fragmentary. Late Miocene glaciomarine deposits at the base of the group in eastern James Ross Island (Hobbs Glacier Formation) and Late Pliocene (3 Ma) interglacial strata at its local top on Cockburn Island (Cockburn Island Formation) have been studied extensively, but other Neogene sedimentary rocks on James Ross Island have thus far not been considered in great detail. Here, we document two further occurrences of glaciomarine strata, included in an expanded Hobbs Glacier Formation, which demonstrate the stratigraphic complexity of the James Ross Island Volcanic Group: reworked diamictites intercalated within the volcanic sequence at Fiordo Belén, northern James Ross Island, are dated by 40Ar/39Ar and 87Sr/86Sr at c. 7 Ma (Late Miocene), but massive diamictites which underlie volcanic rocks near Cape Gage, on eastern James Ross Island, yielded an Ar–Ar age of <3.1 Ma (Late Pliocene). These age assignments are confirmed by benthic foraminiferal index species of the genus Ammoelphidiella. The geological setting and Cassidulina-dominated foraminiferal biofacies of the rocks at Fiordo Belén suggest deposition in water depths of 150–200 m. The periglacial deposits and waterlain tills at Cape Gage were deposited at shallower depths (<100 m), as indicated by an abundance of the pectinid bivalve ‘Zygochlamys’ anderssoni and the epibiotic foram Cibicides lobatulus. Macrofaunal and foraminiferal biofacies of glaciomarine and interglacial deposits share many similarities, which suggests that temperature is not the dominant factor in the distribution of late Neogene Antarctic biota. Approximately 10 m.y. of Miocene–Pliocene climatic record is preserved within the rock sequence of the James Ross Island Volcanic Group. Prevailing glacial conditions were punctuated by interglacial conditions around 3 Ma.