INVERSION TECTONICS OF INTRACONTINENTAL RANGES - HIGH AND MIDDLE ATLAS, MOROCCO

The High and Middle Atlas are intracontinental mountain belts situated within the mobile foreland of the Mediterranean Rif orogen. They developed in three stages. The first period (Permian - Bathonian) culminated during the Lias with extended rift grabens and tholeiite extrusions. From Callovian to Eocene, the tectonic activity and the rates of sedimentation were reduced, both pointing to a cooling of the lithosphere. Since the Oligocene, the whole region is submitted to compressional stress. The High and the Middle Atlas were uplifted within two phases, which were correlated with main phases of Rif orogenesis. Refraction seismic measurements have recently revealed there a flat layered structure of the crust with several low velocity zones. The deepest one coincides with a layer of high electric conductivity, which is interpreted as a zone of detachment. From the geotectonic evolution of the High and Middle Atlas and from the structure of the crust, the following model was deduced: During Early Mesozoic rifting, the crust on top of the mantle elevations was thinned by both extensional fracturing and by gliding along intracrustal detachment planes. During the Cenozoic collisions of the Rif, these shear planes were reactivated by thrusting in opposite directions. Compressional deformation of the graben fillings led now to a moderate thickening of the crust, e.g. up to 40 km beneath the High Atlas. Subsequent uplift and inversion was not only caused by isostasy, but also by squeezing upward due to thick- and thin-skinned tectonics.