Apulia Carbonate Platform

The Apulia Carbonate Platform in Apulia, Italy, was a major palaeogeographic element of the southern margin of the Mesozoic Tethys Ocean. It is one of the so-called peri-Adriatic platforms, which are comparable to the Bahama Banks in their carbonate facies, shape, size, and subsidence rate and, also, in the internal architecture.

The Apulia Platform, which is part of the stable and relatively undeformed foreland of the Apennine thrust belt, is bounded on both sides by basinal deposits; westward the margin is buried under the Apennine thrust sheets, to the east the adjacent paleogeographic domains are the vast Ionian Basin to the south and the Umbria-Marche Basin to the north. To the west, the Apulia Platform plunges downfaulted underneath the terrigenous sediments of the Apennine foredeep; to the southeast, the Jurassic–Early Cretaceous margin lies 20–30 km offshore from the present Apulia coastline.