The northwestern Adriatic Sea from the Po River mouth to the Gargano Peninsula (Figure 1) is an ideal location to study sedimentary processes that fill foreland basins and form epicontinental shelves. These semi-enclosed shelves form in depressions on continental crust; they differ in morphology and origin from pericontinental shelves, which are found along the edges of ocean basins and are largely the result of sea-level rise. A number of epicontinental shelves are extant today (e.g., Yellow Sea, Baltic Sea), and they were more common during the geologic past when sea level was relatively stable. For example, during the Cretaceous Period (~100 million years ago), an epicontinental shelf ran north-south through the middle of the North American continent, received sediments from the Rocky Mountains, and created the oil-producing strata in that region.

Nittrouer, C., S. Miserocchi, and F. Trincardi. 2004. The PASTA Project: Investigation of Po and Apennine sediment transport and accumulation. Oceanography 17(4):46–57, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2004.03.

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