ABSTRACT

The talk will start with a brief, general introduction into the tectonic situation on the Balkan Peninsula and then focus on the Rhodope Mountains in southern Bulgaria and northern Greece describing the overall geology and tectonic architecture. I will zoom into some key areas presenting recent structural, petrological, and isotopic age data that have dramatically changed the view on the Rhodopes (at least my view).

In the traditional scheme, the Rhodopes are viewed as occupying a structural position internal of the so-called Vardar Suture, which would be above the highest nappes of the Dinarides/Hellenides.  Accordingly, their last major orogenic event would have happened before Upper Cretaceous times. Many new data sets, however, indicate that events like the subduction of continental crust, associated high-pressure metamorphism, super rapid exhumation of eclogite-facies basement, and large-scale nappe stacking happened in the Eocene, very shortly before well-known magmatism and regional extension. The later are now seen as an immediate response to orogeny rather than an independent later event. The Vardar Suture can be traced within the Rhodopes and the units exposed beneath that suture, probably represent a window into the Adriatic plate, which today is on the other side of a plate boundary 500 kilometers further west. This would imply that the entire Dinarides/Hellenides are  allochthonous.