Author(s)

Aymen Arfaoui^1,2*, Kais Aridhi², Sabri Aridhi³, Mohamed Ghanmi², Fouad Zargouni²

¹Service Géologique, Office National des Mines (ONM), Tunis, Tunisie.
²Unité de Recherche Géomantique, Géologie Structurale et Appliquée, Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, Université Tunis-El Manar, Campus Universitaire, Tunis, Tunisie.
³Entreprise Tunisienne d’Activités Pétrolière (ETAP), Tunis, Tunisie.

The Tunisian Dorsal backland is the Eastern Atlas side of maghrebides. Field data of Fahs area allowed us to develop new interpretations and to characterize the main structural features of the studied devices (Jebel Rouas and Ruissate). Heritage of Zaghouan accident, Triassic salt movements and strike-direction of major synsedimentary faults are the principal causes and results of the skinned and superimposed geometric architecture, generated by the reversed extensional (Jurassic-Cretaceous) tectonics. The actual geometry of Jebel Rouas and Ruissate represents a fault propagation fold, affecting Jurassic and Cretaceous sets. The backland of this thrust fault defines an imbrications structures of Barremian series. Tectonic records activities show the existence of angular unconformities (Oligocene and Eocene series on the Cretaceous sets considered as bedrock), slumps, tectonic breccias and synsedimentary faults are all of them controlled by a deep major accident; N-S to NE-SW and NW-SE. Features of the study area are probably related first; to the blockage of Zaghouan thrust oriented NE-SW in the foreland; then, to the intense halokinetic activity, which facilitates the layers displacement acting as decollment level. The detailed structural and stratigraphic study of Fahs area and its neighbors shows the presence of an intense tangential tectonic during upper Miocene, affecting Meso-Cenozoic sets, because all the structures involved are sealed by Oligocene and Miocene thinned series. This is accentuated by the existence of different sets of decollment at different depths, which are represented by a displacement to the SE through the backland of the Tunisian Dorsal. We define these features as an imbrication and thrusting Out of sequence system.

Tunisian Dorsal Backland, Paleogeographic Reconstitution, Unconformities, Synsedimentary Faults, Thrust Tectonic, Decollement Level, Ramp Folds, Fault Propagation Fold

Arfaoui, A. , Aridhi, K. , Aridhi, S. , Ghanmi, M. and Zargouni, F. (2016) Paleogeographic Reconstitution and Tangential Tectonic in the Backland of Tunisian Dorsal (Fahs Area: J. Rouas and Ruissate). International Journal of Geosciences, 7, 239-248. doi: 10.4236/ijg.2016.73019.