Abstract

The 35 km long east–west-trending Trichonis basin in western central Greece is located between the Kephalonia Transform Fault and the east–west-trending Corinth Rift, exhibiting analogous, but smaller scale, morphotectonic features to the Corinth Rift. The final cooling and exhumation of the area started after at c. 10 Ma, after the burial owing to the emplacement of the Pindos thrust (c. 30–20 Ma). The deformation includes (1) an Early–Middle Miocene transpression (T₁) during the waning stage of collision between Apulia and Eurasia, and (2) a Late Miocene–Pliocene radial extension (T₂), which relates to the separation of the Hellenic subduction zone from the Apulia (Adria)–Eurasia collision plate boundary through the Kephalonia Transform Fault. Two extensional stress tensors, T₃ and T₄, with σ3 in NNE (023°), and NNW (157°) directions, respectively, describe the modern stress regime in the Trichonis basin. This spatial stress partitioning is due to competition between back-arc stresses associated with Hellenic subduction-zone retreat and stresses of the post-collisional collapse of the Hellenic orogen. The Trichonis basin is not a pull-apart basin in a sinistral rift–trench link, but is an immature basin in the Corinth Rift along the Trichonis Fault. The later stands as a right-stepping fault branch to the main faults of the Corinth Rift.