• shallow shelf

• The Upper Permian deposits of the eastern Southern Alps display the typical features of early rift successions: onset of sedimentation after a long period of subaerial erosion, and upward fining trend from red beds, trough evaporates to marine carbonates, with backstepping pattern of component sequences. These are though to be part of second order Upper Permian-Scythian rift-related sequence.

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•Val Gardena sandstone and the Bellerophon Formation (Upper Permian) in the Dolomites and Carnia show an overall transgressive trend and record the transition from continental red-bed to marine sedimentation in an extensional tectonic setting. The eastward progression of the Bellephron transgression resulted in the diachrony of the boundary between Val Gardena Sandstone and Bellephron Formation. The transgression was actually punctuated by a series of cyclical pulsations, which resulted in complex interfingering of terrigenous, evaporitic and carbonate deposits and in the subdivisions of the sedimentary succession into a number of sequences. The various vacies are essentially contempareous and follow one another along a paleoslope gently inclined towards the east, so that the red beds grade basinwards (i.e. eastwards ) through sabkha and lagoonal deposits into marine carbonates.

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•In the area between the Adige Valley and the Karawanken Mountains the Bellephron Formation ranges in thickness from 0 ( westernmost area ) to 360 m.

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•The Bellephron Formation consists of a very complex array of lithofacies, its depositional area may be subdivided from west to east into

•1) Coastal belt characterized by sabkha-type sediments interfingering with terminal fan deposits.

•2) Hypersaline lagoon or restricted inner shelf, characterized by evaporates and carbonate deposits.

•3) An inner carbonate shelf.

•The transition from coastal to offshore environments was extremely gradual, suggesting a very gentle depositional gradient, and resulting in sedimentation particularly sensitive to environmental changes. The Bellephron Formation is sharply or transitional overlain by a regional widespread member between different sections, in the absence of outcrop continuity.

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• The Upper Permian succession of the Southern Alps displays the typical features of early rift successions. The overall pattern is that of transgressive, backstepping and onlapping arrangements of deposits suggesting a background of regional subsidence.

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•Sedimentation started in graben-like depressions, and was initially fed by local sources. Later as a result of regional subsidence and morphogenetic evolution of the basin, the original depositional areas joined, ultimately resulting in an unified and increasingly expanded depression with sedimentary fill progressively onlapping the margins of the basin. Basin opening is recorded by coarse scree and alluvial fan deposits.

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•The thickness of Val Gardena Sandstone in the study area ranges from zero ( Trento area ) to more than 500 m ( Comelico area ). In the Dolomites and Carnia, the red beds grade into the evaporitic and carbonate deposits of the Bellerophon Formation. The transgression progressively encroached on western areas. A structural high between the Adige Valley and the Giudicarie Line prevented the westward progression of the transgression, so that the Bellerophron Formation appears on a broad scale as a sedimentary wedge pinching out westwards. The Bellephron Formation is overlain by the Lombardian Unit ( continental sediment ).

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