CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The Nevados del Famatina, located in northwestern Argentina (Fig. 1), is one of the higher non-volcanic mountains belts in South America reaching up to 6200 m in height. Despite the fact that the uplift of the Nevados del Famatina was (and is) closely related to the Andean Orogeny, these mountains are located about 400 km from the Chile trench and up to 100 km from the main Andean Cordillera (Cobbold et al., 2007).The origin of the high and isolated Nevados del Famatina is related to a Neogene tectonic syntaxis due to the relationship between the left-lateral Valle Fértil wrench fault and the right-lateral Tucuman wrench fault (Rossello et al., 2011). The Vinchina Basin, a highly subsiding basin that accumulated more than 10,000 m of continental sediments during the Neogene developed between the magmatic arc, located in the Andean Cordillera, and the Famatina Mountain. The study of the sedimentary fill of the Vinchina Basin allows reconstructing not only the evolution of the magmatic arc (and its associated deformation) but also the timing and effect of the uplift of the Nevados del Famatina. The stratigraphy of the Vinchina Basin, which very probably represents the northern culmination of the Bermejo Basin, was studied by several authors. Recently, Ciccioli et al. (2011) divided the Vinchina Basinfill into five stages named: 1. Retroarc, 2. Early transpressive retroarc, 3. Late transpressive retroarc, 4. Transpressional foreland and 5. Cannibalized foreland. New radiometric ages and stratigraphic evidences allow the timing of these stages to be refined and to relate them with the uplift of the Nevados del Famatina and the basement blocks of Sierras Pampeanas Noroccidentales.