The Anisian-Carnian Verrucano Group of the Tuscan Metamorphic Units and the Triassic-Hettangian Pseudoverrucano Formation of the homonymous unit are mainly continental redbeds occurring in Tuscany at the base of the Alpine orogenic cycle. A study carried out throughout the Apennine, Maghrebian and Betic Chains emphasized the presence in all these orogenic belts of deposits more or less coeval and similar both to the metamorphic Verrucano and to the unmetamorphosed Pseudoverrucano. Thus, the distinction of Verrucano and Pseudoverrucano successions has a palaeogeographical and geodynamic importance at the scale of the Western Mediterranean. Both successions developed during the continental rift stage of Pangaea, which led to later break-up at the edges of a future microplate, interposed between the Europe, Africa and Adria-Apulia plates, but they are characterized by different tectonometamorphic evolution. Pseudoverrucano-like deposits, devoid of Alpine metamorphism, characterize the highest tectonic units of the nappe stack and they overthrust units bearing Verrucano-like deposits. These latter show an Alpine tectonometamorphic history marked during the Miocene by intense deformation and HP/LT metamorphism (at pressures in the range of 0.8–2 GPa), followed by a retrograde phase associated with decompression, suggesting subduction and subsequent exhumation of continental crust. Intriguing palaeogeographical problems arise from the analysis of Verrucanobearing units, because the same evolution seems to characterize both units considered to belong to a realm similar to that of the north-verging Austroalpine nappe system and some units referred to the south-verging fold-thrust belt derived from the Adria-Apulia palaeomargin.

Evidence is presented for Triassic rift-related palaeo-structures from the Alpujarride Complex carbonates of the Betic Cordillera, SE Spain. Direct evidence of synsedimentary extensional tectonics is provided by macro- to meso-scale normal faults overstepped by younger strata. Most faults define domino-like horst and graben structures. The faults are associated with an expanded synrift sedimentary prism in which soft-sediment deformation, gravity-flow deposits and unconformities are widely developed. Syntectonic mafic igneous intrusions also occur. The age of this phase of extension is constrained as Ladinian–Carnian ( c . 237–216 Ma). From a palaeogeographical standpoint, the thick Triassic carbonates of the Betic Internal Zone, together with comparable successions in Northern Calabria (Southern Apennines), occupied a belt with elevated subsidence connecting the Neo-Tethys to the east with the eastern North American intracontinental rift system to the west. Their carbonate facies, intermediate between classical Alpine- and Germanic-type Triassic facies, recorded the main episodes of rifting affecting Central Pangaea.