The Murge limestone plateau has many valleys or crevasses, with steep walls, the so-called ravines. These majestic fissures in the earth’s surface are found both in Puglia and Basilicata, between the provinces of Bari, Matera and Taranto. Their formation is primarily due to tectonic phenomena, then to subsidence and, finally, to karst phenomena.
Originally the plateau, an offshoot of the Apennines, was an ancient seabed, which emerged thanks to repeated tectonic uplifts, followed by subsidence (subsidence). These seabeds, once they emerged from sea level, were subject to a further modeling action by very ancient glacial watercourses and run-off meteoric waters (karst: dissolution of the limestone rock due to the chemical and mechanical action of the waterfall). All this gave rise to the current ravines.
This happened starting more than one hundred million years ago, from the Upper Cretaceous to the Lower Pliocene. The Pliocene seabed was composed of a rocky base formed in the Cretaceous period, which is the rock known as Altamura Limestone. On this layer, about three thousand meters deep, the remains of marine animals, which had reached the end of their life cycle, accumulated through sedimentation. These are the so-called sandstones, which gave rise to the rock known as Calcarenite di Gravina, commonly defined as tuff by the locals.
