Articles

On the use of gravity data in delineating geologic features of interest for geothermal exploration in the Geneva Basin (Switzerland): prospects and limitations

Gravity data retrieved from the Bureau Gravimétrique International and the Gravimetric Atlas of Switzerland have been used to evaluate their applicability as a subsurface investigation tool to assess key geolo...

Authors: L. Guglielmetti and A. Moscariello

Episodes of fissure formation in the Alps: connecting quartz fluid inclusion, fissure monazite age, and fissure orientation data

Fluid assisted Alpine fissure-vein and cleft formation starts at prograde, peak or retrograde metamorphic conditions of 450–550 °C and 0.3–0.6 GPa and below, commonly at conditions of ductile to brittle rock d...

Authors: Edwin Gnos, Josef Mullis, Emmanuelle Ricchi, Christian A. Bergemann, Emilie Janots and Alfons Berger

SAPHYR: Swiss Atlas of Physical Properties of Rocks: the continental crust in a database

The Swiss Atlas of Physical Properties of Rocks (SAPHYR) project aims at centralize, uniform, and digitize dispersed and often hardly accessible laboratory data on physical properties of rocks from Switzerland...

Authors: Alba Zappone and Eduard Kissling

Metamorphic gabbro and basalt in ophiolitic and continental nappes of the Zermatt region (Western Alps)

The composition of meta-gabbro and meta-basalt occurring abundant and widespread in all nappes of the nappe stack exposed in the Zermatt region of the Western Alp shows distinct patterns related to the geodyna...

Authors: Kurt Bucher and Ingrid Stober

Origins of hydrocarbons in the Geneva Basin: insights from oil, gas and source rock organic geochemistry

An extensive subsurface investigation evaluating the geothermal energy resources and underground thermal energy storage potential is being carried out in the southwestern part of the Swiss Molasse Basin around...

Authors: Damien Do Couto, Sylvain Garel, Andrea Moscariello, Samer Bou Daher, Ralf Littke and Philipp Weniger

Dynamics of collisional mountain ranges: a progress report on the Alps Special Issue on the results from the 14th Emile Argand Alpine Workshop, Sion 2019, Switzerland

Authors: Paola Manzotti, Othmar Müntener, Stefan Schmid and Daniel Marty

Structural and thermal evolution of the eastern Aar Massif: insights from structural field work and Raman thermometry

The thermo-kinematic evolution of the eastern Aar Massif, Swiss Alps, was investigated using peak temperature data estimated from Raman spectroscopy of carbonaceous material and detailed field analyses. New an...

Authors: Lukas Nibourel, Alfons Berger, Daniel Egli, Stefan Heuberger and Marco Herwegh

Stratigraphic revision and reconstruction of the deep-sea fan of the Voirons Flysch (Voirons Nappe, Chablais Prealps)

The Voirons Flysch (Caron in Eclogae Geologicae Helvetiae 69:297–308, 1976), is a flysch sequence aggregated into the sedimentary accretionary prism of the Chablais and Swiss Prealps. Its palaeogeographic loca...

Authors: Jérémy Ragusa, Lina Maria Ospina-Ostios, Pascal Kindler and Mario Sartori

In memoriam: John Ramsay (1931–2021)

Authors: Neil Mancktelow

Blueschist mylonitic zones accommodating syn-subduction exhumation of deeply buried continental crust: the example of the Rocca Canavese Thrust Sheets Unit (Sesia–Lanzo Zone, Italian Western Alps)

The Rocca Canavese Thrust Sheets Unit (RCTU) is a subduction-related mélange that represents the eastern-most complex of the Sesia–Lanzo Zone (SLZ), bounded by the Periadriatic (Canavese) Lineament that separa...

Authors: Manuel Roda, Michele Zucali, Luca Corti, Roberto Visalli, Gaetano Ortolano and Maria Iole Spalla

Anders McCarthy receives the 2020 Paul Niggli Medal

Authors:

Earthquakes in Switzerland and surrounding regions during 2017 and 2018

This report summarizes the seismicity in Switzerland and surrounding regions in the years 2017 and 2018. In 2017 and 2018, the Swiss Seismological Service detected and located 1227 and 955 earthquakes in the r...

Authors: Tobias Diehl, John Clinton, Carlo Cauzzi, Toni Kraft, Philipp Kästli, Nicolas Deichmann, Frédérick Massin, Francesco Grigoli, Irene Molinari, Maren Bӧse, Manuel Hobiger, Florian Haslinger, Donat Fäh and Stefan Wiemer

Fossil oceanic core complexes in the Alps. New field, geochemical and isotopic constraints from the Tethyan Aiguilles Rouges Ophiolite (Val d’Hérens, Western Alps, Switzerland)

Exhumation of basement rocks on the seafloor is a worldwide feature along passive continental margins and (ultra-) slow-spreading environments, documented by dredging, drilling or direct observations by diving...

Authors: Thierry Decrausaz, Othmar Müntener, Paola Manzotti, Romain Lafay and Carl Spandler

Formation and decay of peat bogs in the vegetable belt of Switzerland

The rapidly collapsing glacial systems of the Alps produced a large number of melt-water lakes and mires after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in the Late Glacial period. The Rhone-Aare-glacier system gave rise...

Authors: Markus Egli, Guido Wiesenberg, Jens Leifeld, Holger Gärtner, Jan Seibert, Claudia Röösli, Vladimir Wingate, Wasja Dollenmeier, Pascal Griffel, Jeannine Suremann, Jan Weber, Mergime Zyberaj and Alessandra Musso

A report on gender diversity and equality in the geosciences: an analysis of the Swiss Geoscience Meetings from 2003 to 2019

Authors: Francesca Piccoli and Giulia Guidobaldi

The evolution of the Sesia Zone (Western Alps) from Carboniferous to Cretaceous: insights from zircon and allanite geochronology

Microscale dating of distinct domains in minerals that contain relics of multiple metamorphic events is a key tool to characterize the polyphase evolution of complex metamorphic terranes. Zircon and allanite f...

Authors: Alice Vho, Daniela Rubatto, Pierre Lanari and Daniele Regis

Late Palaeozoic tectonics in Central Mediterranean: a reappraisal

A revision of late Palaeozoic tectonics recorded in Tuscany, Calabria and Corsica is here presented. We propose that, in Tuscany, upper Carboniferous-Permian shallow-marine to continental sedimentary basins, c...

Authors: Giancarlo Molli, Andrea Brogi, Alfredo Caggianelli, Enrico Capezzuoli, Domenico Liotta, Amalia Spina and Ivan Zibra

Correction to: Ion microprobe dating of fissure monazite in the Western Alps: insights from the Argentera Massif and the Piemontais and Briançonnais Zones

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Authors: Emmanuelle Ricchi, Edwin Gnos, Daniela Rubatto, Martin John Whitehouse and Thomas Pettke

The Wechsel Gneiss Complex of Eastern Alps: an Ediacaran to Cambrian continental arc and its Early Proterozoic hinterland

Many metamorphosed basement complexes in the Alps are polymetamorphic and their origin and geological history may only be deciphered by detailed geochronology on the different members including oceanic element...

Authors: Franz Neubauer, Yongjiang Liu, Ruihong Chang, Sihua Yuan, Shengyao Yu, Johann Genser, Boran Liu and Qingbin Guan

Correction to: The role of the antigorite + brucite to olivine reaction in subducted serpentinites (Zermatt, Switzerland)

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Authors: Elias D. Kempf, Jörg Hermann, Eric Reusser, Lukas P. Baumgartner and Pierre Lanari

Pre-Alpine thermal history recorded in the continental crust from Alpine Corsica (France): evidence from zircon and allanite LA-ICP-MS dating

The pre-Alpine history of the Venaco-Ghisoni Unit, a continental unit belonging to the Alpine Corsica (France), was reconstructed on the basis of U–Pb dating of zircon and allanite. Zircon was separated from a...

Authors: Maria Di Rosa, Federico Farina, Pierre Lanari and Michele Marroni

Widespread Permian granite magmatism in Lower Austroalpine units: significance for Permian rifting in the Eastern Alps

The Grobgneis complex, located in the eastern Austroalpine unit of the Eastern Alps, exposes large volumes of pre-Alpine porphyric metagranites, sometimes associated with small gabbroic bodies. To better under...

Authors: Sihua Yuan, Franz Neubauer, Yongjiang Liu, Johann Genser, Boran Liu, Shengyao Yu, Ruihong Chang and Qingbin Guan

Structural evolution along the Susa Shear Zone: the role of a first-order shear zone in the exhumation of meta-ophiolite units (Western Alps)

In the Western Alps, different shear zones acting at different depths have been investigated for explaining multistage exhumation of (U)HP units, and several exhumation models have been proposed for explaining...

Authors: Stefano Ghignone, Gianni Balestro, Marco Gattiglio and Alessandro Borghi

The role of the antigorite + brucite to olivine reaction in subducted serpentinites (Zermatt, Switzerland)

Metamorphic olivine formed by the reaction of antigorite + brucite is widespread in serpentinites that crop out in glacier-polished outcrops at the Unterer Theodulglacier, Zermatt. Olivine overgrows a relic ma...

Authors: Elias D. Kempf, Jörg Hermann, Eric Reusser, Lukas P. Baumgartner and Pierre Lanari

Ion microprobe dating of fissure monazite in the Western Alps: insights from the Argentera Massif and the Piemontais and Briançonnais Zones

Ion probe ²⁰⁸Pb/²³²Th fissure monazite ages from the Argentera External Massif and from the high-pressure units of the Western Alps provide new insights on its Cenozoic tectonic evolution. Hydrothermal monazite c...

Authors: Emmanuelle Ricchi, Edwin Gnos, Daniela Rubatto, Martin John Whitehouse and Thomas Pettke

Subduction of a rifted passive continental margin: the Pohorje case of Eastern Alps–constraints from geochronology and geochemistry

This study presents geochronological and geochemical data from newly dated Permian granitic orthogneisses associated with the Eclogite-Gneiss unit (EGU) from the southernmost part of the Austroalpine nappe sta...

Authors: Ruihong Chang, Franz Neubauer, Yongjiang Liu, Johann Genser, Wei Jin, Sihua Yuan, Qingbin Guan, Qianwen Huang and Weimin Li

Mimicking Alpine thrusts by passive deformation of synsedimentary normal faults: a record of the Jurassic extension of the European margin (Mont Fort nappe, Pennine Alps)

The Mont Fort nappe, former uppermost subunit of the Grand St-Bernard nappe system, is an independent tectonic unit with specific structural and stratigraphic characteristics (Middle Penninic, NW Italy and SW ...

Authors: Adrien Pantet, Jean-Luc Epard and Henri Masson

A step towards unraveling the paleogeographic attribution of pre-Mesozoic basement complexes in the Western Alps based on U–Pb geochronology of Permian magmatism

The Briançonnais Domain (Western Alps) represented the thinned continental margin facing the Piemonte-Liguria Ocean, later shortened during the Alpine orogeny. In the external part of the External Briançonnais...

Authors: Michel Ballèvre, Audrey Camonin, Paola Manzotti and Marc Poujol

A laboratory approach for the calibration of seismic data in the western part of the Swiss Molasse Basin: the case history of well Humilly-2 (France) in the Geneva area

A collection of 81 plugs were obtained from the Humilly-2 borehole (France), that reached the Permo-Carboniferous sediments at a depth of 3051 m. Experimental measurements of physical parameters and mineralogi...

Authors: Mahmoud Hefny, Alba Zappone, Yasin Makhloufi, Antoine de Haller and Andrea Moscariello

Banded amphibolites in the Alps: a new interpretation in relation to early Paleozoic peraluminous magmatism

The Strona-Ceneri Zone is located south of the Insubric line, where Alpine overprint is mainly brittle and of low grade or even absent. Apart from the unmetamorphic Permo-Carboniferous sediments and intrusiva ...

Authors: Roger Zurbriggen

A derived sauropodiform dinosaur and other sauropodomorph material from the Late Triassic of Canton Schaffhausen, Switzerland

Although sauropodomorph dinosaurs have been known for a long time from the Late Triassic of central Europe, sauropodomorph diversity and faunal composition has remained controversial until today. Here we revie...

Authors: Oliver W. M. Rauhut, Femke M. Holwerda and Heinz Furrer

The Erdmannshöhle near Hasel, SW Germany: karst environment and cave evolution

The Erdmannshöhle is located at the NE margin of the Dinkelberg plateau in SW Germany. With a length of 2315 m, it is the longest cave in the deep open karst area near the village of Hasel. Three main cave lev...

Authors: Arnfried Becker, Karsten Piepjohn and Andrea Schröder-Ritzrau

Messinian or Pleistocene valley incision within the Southern Alps

Many of the valleys on the southern slope of the Alps are over-deepened, having bedrock valley floors well below sea level. This has typically been attributed to incision that occurred during the Messinian Sal...

Authors: Sascha Winterberg, Vincenzo Picotti and Sean D. Willett

Jonas Ruh receives the 2019 Paul Niggli Medal

Authors:

Correction to: Paleoenvironmental changes across the Paleocene–Eocene boundary in West Central Sinai, Egypt: geochemical proxies

Following publication of the original article (Ghandour 2020), it was reported that the location map in Fig. 1 is modified after Speijer, but this was not mentioned in the caption of Fig. 1.

Authors: Ibrahim Mohamed Ghandour

The relation between peak metamorphic temperatures and subsequent cooling during continent–continent collision (western Central Alps, Switzerland)

The maximum temperature (T_max) and subsequent exhumation reflect the relations between advective and conductive heat transport, which in turn depend on the tectonic evolution. To unravel these relations in an oro...

Authors: Alfons Berger, Martin Engi, Silja Erne-Schmid, Christoph Glotzbach, Cornelia Spiegel, Rick de Goede and Marco Herwegh

Paleoenvironmental changes across the Paleocene–Eocene boundary in West Central Sinai, Egypt: geochemical proxies

A geochemical analysis has been conducted on twenty-six sediment samples spanning the P–E boundary interval collected from the Esna Shale in three well-dated stratigraphic sections in west-central Sinai, Egypt...

Authors: Ibrahim Mohamed Ghandour

Re-description of the sauropod dinosaur Amanzia (“Ornithopsis/Cetiosauriscus”) greppini n. gen. and other vertebrate remains from the Kimmeridgian (Late Jurassic) Reuchenette Formation of Moutier, Switzerland

Dinosaur remains were discovered in the 1860’s in the Kimmeridgian (Late Jurassic) Reuchenette Formation of Moutier, northwestern Switzerland. In the 1920’s, these were identified as a new species of sauropod, Or...

Authors: Daniela Schwarz, Philip D. Mannion, Oliver Wings and Christian A. Meyer

The Theodul Glacier Unit, a slab of pre-Alpine rocks in the Alpine meta-ophiolite of Zermatt-Saas, Western Alps

The Theodul-Glacier-Unit (TGU) is a 100 m thick and 2 km long slab of pre-Alpine schist, gneiss and mafic rocks tectonically emplaced in the eclogite-facies Zermatt-Saas meta-ophiolite nappe (ZSU). The meta-se...

Authors: Kurt Bucher, Tobias Björn Weisenberger, Sebastian Weber, Oliver Klemm and Fernando Corfu

Geochemical constrains on dolomitization pathways of the Upper Jurassic carbonate rocks in the Geneva Basin (Switzerland and France)

The Kimmeridgian-Tithonian carbonate rocks of the Geneva Basin represent potential reservoirs for geothermal energy exploitation. Based on petrographic data, a previous study (Makhloufi et al. 2018) reported thre...

Authors: Y. Makhloufi and E. Samankassou

Vertical-axis rotation in East Kopet Dagh, NE Iran, inferred from paleomagnetic data: oroclinal bending or complex local folding kinematics?

The Kopet Dagh Mountains in NE Iran result from Cenozoic tectonic inversion of Triassic and Jurassic rifts that formed along the southern margin of the Eurasian continental plate. The Kopet Dagh defines an arc...

Authors: Jonas B. Ruh, Luis Valero, Lotfollah Aghajari, Elisabet Beamud and Gholamreza Gharabeigli

Under the feet of sauropods: a trampled coastal marine turtle from the Late Jurassic of Switzerland?

Recent excavations from the “Paléontologie A16” project brought to light thousands of dinosaur footprints and numerous turtle remains from the Late Jurassic of Porrentruy (Swiss Jura Mountains). While most fos...

Authors: Christian Püntener, Jean-Paul Billon-Bruyat, Daniel Marty and Géraldine Paratte

Paleocene metamorphism along the Pennine–Austroalpine suture constrained by U–Pb dating of titanite and rutile (Malenco, Alps)

We present in situ rutile and titanite U–Pb geochronology for three samples from the Ur breccia, which forms the boundary between the Malenco unit and the Margna nappe (Eastern Central Alps) near Pass d’Ur in ...

Authors: Suzanne M. Picazo, Tanya A. Ewing and Othmar Müntener

Examination of a relationship between atmospheric blocking and seismic events in the Middle East using a new seismo-climatic index

This study statistically examines the role of atmospheric blocking as a precursor of major seismic events. Atmospheric blocking archive and earthquake databases for the Middle East region are compiled for 2000...

Authors: Mohammad Reza Mansouri Daneshvar and Friedemann T. Freund

A new species of Palaeopython (Serpentes) and other extinct squamates from the Eocene of Dielsdorf (Zurich, Switzerland)

The lizard and snake fauna from the late middle–late Eocene (MP 16–MP 20) of Dielsdorf, near Zurich, Switzerland, is described comprehensively in this paper. Detailed comparisons of the Dielsdorf material with...

Authors: Georgios L. Georgalis and Torsten M. Scheyer

Facies and depositional environments of the Upper Muschelkalk (Schinznach Formation, Middle Triassic) in northern Switzerland

Subsurface sedimentary strata in northern Switzerland, such as the Middle Triassic Upper Muschelkalk, are attracting interest as potential reservoirs for CO₂ sequestration and for geothermal energy production. Ch...

Authors: Arthur Adams and Larryn W. Diamond

Unravelling the shape and stratigraphy of a glacially-overdeepened valley with reflection seismic: the Lienz Basin (Austria)

We reveal the subsurface bedrock topography and sedimentary succession of one of the deepest glacially-formed basins in the Eastern Alps: the Lienz Basin in the Upper Drau Valley (Tyrol), by means of seismic r...

Authors: Thomas Burschil, David C. Tanner, Jürgen M. Reitner, Hermann Buness and Gerald Gabriel

Johannes Hämmerli and Nicolas Greber receive the 2018 Paul Niggli Medal

Authors:

Postcranial skeleton of Birgeria liui (Osteichthyes, Actinopterygii) from the Longobardian (Ladinian, Middle Triassic) of Xingyi, Guizhou, South China

The large carnivorous ray-finned fish Birgeria liui Jin, 2001 from the Middle Triassic marine Zhuganpo Member, was previously briefly described based on an incomplete specimen, which lacked the skull and the ante...

Authors: Peigang Ni, Andrea Tintori, Zuoyu Sun, Cristina Lombardo and Dayong Jiang

The Misery Point cliff, Mayaguana Island, SE Bahamas: a unique record of sea-level highstands since the Early Pleistocene

We describe in detail a unique succession of Lower Pleistocene shallow-water carbonates exposed at the Misery Point sea cliff along the northern shoreline of Mayaguana Island (SE Bahamas). This km-scale outcro...

Authors: Fabienne Godefroid, Pascal Kindler, Massimo Chiaradia and Gyöngyvér Fischer