@article{11291,
  author = {Aymen Said and Patrice Baby and Dominique Chardon and Jamel Ouali},
  title = {Structure, Paleogeographic Inheritance and Deformation History of the Southern Atlas Foreland Fold-and-Thrust Belt of Tunisia},
  abstract = {Structural analysis of the Southern Tunisian Atlas was carried out using field observation, seismic interpretation and cross-sections balancing. It shows a mix of thick-skinned and thin-skinned tectonics with lateral variations in regional structural geometry and amounts of shortening controlled by NW-SE oblique ramps and tear faults. It confirms the role of the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic rifting inheritance in the structuring of the active foreland fold and thrust belt of the Southern Tunisian Atlas, in particular in the development of NW-SE oblique structures as the Gafsa fault. The Late Triassic-Early Jurassic structural pattern is characterized by a family of first order NW-SE trending normal faults dipping to the east and by second order E-W trending normal faults limiting a complex system of grabens and horsts. These faults have been inverted during two contractional tectonic events. The first event occurred between the Middle Turonian and the Late Maastrichtian and can be correlated with the onset of the convergence between Africa and Eurasia. The second event corresponding to the principal shortening tectonic event in the Southern Atlas started in the Serravalian- Tortonian and is still active. During the Neogene, the Southern Atlas foreland fold and thrust belt propagated on the evaporitic d{\'e}collement level infilling the Late Triassic-Early Jurassic rift. The major Eocene \“Atlas event\” described in hinterland domains and in the Eastern Tunisia did not deform significantly the Southern Tunisian Atlas, which corresponded in this period to a backbulge broad depozone.},
  year = {2011},
  journal = {Tectonics},
  volume = {30},
  number = {30},
  month = {November},
  publisher = {American Geophysical Union},
  doi = {10.1029/2011TC002862},
}