Plate tectonic evolution of the Mediterranean-Middle East region

Abstract

An interpretive model for the Mesozoic-Cenozoic plate tectonic evolution of the Mediterranean and adjacent areas is illustrated by a series of paleoposition maps at selected intervals between the Late Triassic and Recent. This interval witnessed an important period of tensional development during the Triassic and Jurassic that fragmented Pangea after its Late Paleozoic consolidation. A number of oceanic areas evolved through Jurassic time, all of which have since been consumed during the Alpine orogeny. During the Cretaceous and Tertiary, sea-floor spreading geometry in the North and South Atlantic resulted in convergence between Africa and Eurasia that controlled the evolution of the Mediterranean and adjacent Middle East areas from the Late Mesozoic to Recent. The interpretation departs from several previous ones in the following respects: 1. (1) The Eastern Mediterranean and adjacent Middle East area are interpreted to have developed as two seaways with an intervening continental sliver derived from Africa that now comprises Central Turkey and West Iran. These seaways persisted from the Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous, by which time they were largely consumed by northward subduction. 2. (2) Spreading that produced the present Eastern Mediterranean Sea developed during the Late Cretaceous, driving the Tripolitza-Eratosthenes-Iskenderun continental fragments northward from Africa to collision with Central Turkey as the preceding southern arm of the Mesozoic Tethys sea-floor was entirely consumed. Initial block faulting in this zone occurred during the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous but without subsidence reaching clearly bathyal depths until the Cenomanian-Turonian. This differs from the timing of events in the “Ionian” sequence of the Pindic Nappe of Crete, which shows a change from shallow carbonate shelf in the Triassic to deep basin in the Liassic to the north of equivalent platform facies of the Tripolitza Nappe. ∗ ∗ Sestini (1984). 3. (3) Moesia and Rhodope are concluded to have been a single plate until a rifting event that started during the Late Jurassic. The Balkan Mountains are interpreted to represent an Alpine inversion of this Mesozoic rift system that extended west from the Black Sea Basin. 4. (4) The Eastern Carpathian microcontinental sliver is concluded as continuing southward as the Serbo-Macedonian Massif that separates Rhodope from the Vardar Zone rather than as Rhodope itself. 5. (5) The Scutari-Pec Lineament is considered as representing a major discontinuity between the Apulia-Pannonian plate and adjacent Greece and Turkey. Ophiolites to the northwest of this lineament originated in a single oceanic area, the Vardar Zone. Ophiolites to the southeast of this lineament evolved from two oceanic areas, those of interior Greece and northern Anatolia and the associated Ankara melange relating to the Vardar Zone, the former north arm of Tethys. and the Pindos-southern Anatolia-Zagros-Oman Ophiolites relating to a former south arm of Mesozoic Tethys. 6. (6) Based on the history of development of various elements of the Alpine system, there is a strong suggestion that important dextral movement took place along a major strike-slip fault system reaching from the Middle East to the Central Alps between Late Cretaceous and Middle Eocene times.