The lecture provides characteristic phenomena, selected among others, which gives a way to recognition of the extension, intensity, and time span of the advanced rifting, one of the longest time periods in the Alpine Wilson cycle.
Triassic rift-related magmatism was dominantly intermediate in character. It produced basalts, andesites and dacite at the extrusive level, and gabbro, diorite, granosyenite and granite in the intrusive levels and lasted at least 40 to 50 Myrs. It is spatially and genetically related to the volcano-sedimentary formation as the foundation of the Gondwana passive continental margin and later on totally covered by the Mesozoic carbonate platform sediments. The spatial extension can be traced along the whole Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt. Its equivalents in time, on the Euroasian diverging margin, are not easily recognized. They were subjected to long-term destructive, subduction related processes, during convergence, since the Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous. The intensity of the magmatism ceased with the opening of the Tethys, and accompanied ophiolite formation, a result of seafloor spreading. Study of Triassic magmatism and its products, including ore deposits, is a key to palinspastic interpretation and geological evolution of the Tethys.
Triassic rift-type basalts associated with deep-water sediments of usually red colour are common constituents in the melanges of the western ophiolite zone of the Hellenides–Dinarides, extending from Othrys Mts. and Northern Pindos Mts. (Northern Greece) to the Medvednica and Kalnik Mts. (NW Croatia), then displaced along the Mid-Hungarian Zone up to the Darnó Hill and western Bükk Mts. (NE Hungary). They form meter to kilometer-sized blocks in the mélanges. Pillow basalts are reddish or greenish in colour, usually amygdaloidal, with a characteristic “peperite facies”, in which basalts are mixed with red, normally limy sediments. They are geochemically of various types: WP, MOR or even IA. Associated sediments are red Hallstatt-type limestones, red radiolarites and red Bódvalenketype cherty limestones representing transitional facies between them. Biostratigraphic data (conodonts, radiolarians) show Late Anisian to Lower-Middle Norian age of this volcanism, but in the Northern Pindos Mts. even Late Scythian data were found. These blocks occur in a Jurassic-Cretaceous accretionary mélange zone and bear witness of the the advanced rifting in the NW-part of Neotethys.
The complex lithostratigraphy of the Triassic formations, including sediments and magmatic rocks, supports existance of Advanced rifting processes, at the former passive continental margin of Gondwana, but deny creation of the Oceanic crust in the Lower and Middle Triassic time, in the Neotethyan evolution.