Depositi plio-pleistocenici di Auletta

The area that includes this site represents a very suggestive place from a landscape point of view and of scientific interest from a geological and geomorphological point of view. The importance of this site is of a stratigraphic geological type, for the possibility of observing in outcrop the Pliocene-Pleistocene clastic deposits filling the Auletta basin, a large structural depression, with a trend of about N120°, currently the site of the course of the Tanagro river after it has passed the th read more

The area that includes this site represents a very suggestive place from a landscape point of view and of scientific interest from a geological and geomorphological point of view. The importance of this site is of a stratigraphic geological type, for the possibility of observing in outcrop the Pliocene-Pleistocene clastic deposits filling the Auletta basin, a large structural depression, with a trend of about N120°, currently the site of the course of the Tanagro river after it has passed the threshold of the Vallo di Diano, located at the northern edge of the Monte Alburni massif. In this depression there are deposits of ages between the Upper Pliocene and the Pleistocene, whose extension continues towards Vietri di Potenza and Contursi Terme. The Upper Pliocene deposits outcrop mainly along the valley of the Fiume Bianco, they are discordant on Cretaceous limestones, which sometimes present lithodome holes, and on Miocene siliciclastic deposits; are represented by: basal calcareous conglomerates; sands and clays; polygenic conglomerates; continental clays. In correspondence with the lower valley of the Tanagro River, they describe a continental sedimentary succession (Auletta Unit) of Upper Pliocene – Upper Pleistocene age, represented by: lacustrine clays (Auletta Clays); fluvial gravels (Auletta Conglomerates); travertine deposits (Tufariello Travertines – Tempa Truiana). read less