Evidence for 1.5 km of Uplift of the Central Anatolian Plateau's Southern Margin in the Last 450 kyr and Implications for Its Multiphased Uplift History

Abstract

AbstractAt the southern margin of the Central Anatolian Plateau (CAP), marine deposits that overlie the Central Tauride units at up to 2 km of elevation were used to constrain the onset of uplift to the middle‐late Miocene. This study demonstrates that much younger marine deposits cap the southern margin. We recognize the Last Common Occurrence of Neogloboquadrina spp. (sin) (0.61 Ma) and Pseudoemiliania lacunosa (0.467 Ma), which points to an early middle Pleistocene age. The benthic fauna indicates an epibathyal marine environment (400 to 500 m paleodepth), with an associated paleocoastline now at ~1,500 to 1,600 m above sea level. Our new results imply uplift rates of up to 3.21–3.42 mm/yr for the CAP southern margin since the deposition of the young marine units. In the area, the evaluation of late Pleistocene and Holocene uplift rates of ~1 mm/yr points to a post early middle Pleistocene short‐lived period of rapid uplift of the CAP southern margin, which can correlate the short‐lived surface uplift signal in numerical models of slab breakoff. Overall, this work demonstrates that the majority of the modern topography at the CAP southern margin (1,500 to 1,600 m) was only recently acquired, pointing to the absence of a significant orographic barrier along the southern plateau margin prior to 500 ka. The multiphased uplift recognized at the CAP southern margin by previous authors, as well as the fast uplift rate documented in this work, can be linked to lithosphere delamination and subsequent slab breakoff during the Arabian‐Anatolian continental collision.