The Northeastern Margin of the Adriatic Carbonate Platform

At the end of Pliensbachian or during the Toarcian, several carbonate platforms were individualised by extensional tectonics in southern Tethys, of which the Adriatic Carbonate Platform is one. As a unique and isolated shallow marine depositional system it existed until the end of the Cretaceous. In the Late Lias, the platform margins and slopes were formed by the individualisation processes. Due to the presence of younger sedimentary cover and tectonic disruption from the Early Jurassic until the present, only small parts of the north-eastern margin and its slope are exposed at the surface. During the entire “life-span” of the platform, its NE margin and slope retained more or less the same palaeogeographic position – from western to south-eastern Slovenia, through the central part of Croatia, western and central Bosnia, northern Herzegovina and Montenegro all the way to northern Albania. The region between Zumberak in Croatia and central Bosnia was the most dynamic part of the platform margin during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Shifts of the marginal and slope facies were recorded in Zumberak, where the platform area was progressively reduced during the period from the Lias to the Malm. At the same time, the platform was extended in central Bosnia and Montenegro. A more pronounced reduction of the platform in Cenomanian times marked the beginning of the process of disintegration. The end of the Cretaceous was also the end of the “life” of the Adriatic Carbonate Platform. It mostly became emergent, and the renewed shallow marine carbonate depositional environments in the Eocene were short-lived and lacked the previous platform characteristics, as well as the regional distribution and integrity