"Continentality and weathering age of granitoids in Southern Calabria"

Accettato.ABSTARCT:The main outcrops of granitoid rock in the Italian peninsula are to be found in Calabria or, to be more precise, in southern Calabria.The literature that, up to now, has studied the weathering processes of these rocks, even though limited to the Serre mountains (MORESI 1987; CALCATERRA et al. 1993; MONGELLI & MORESI, 1990; MONGELLI, 1993; MONGELLI et al., 1998; LE PERA & SORRISO VALVO, 2000), has always implicitly or explicitly stated that these alterations occurred in an environment with a “Mediterranean climate” and, consequently, during the Pleistocene time, even considering that time’s climatic variations. This assumption is the basis from which the various stages of maturity of these processes have been looked for and studied area by area, adopting the classical methods of analysis or proposing some new ones.Our recent studies allow us to state that the beginning of the weathering processes in Calabrian granitoids dates back at least to the pre-Tortonia...