Thermochronometric evidence for Miocene tectonic reactivation of the Sevan–Akera suture zone (Lesser Caucasus): a far-field tectonic effect of the Arabia–Eurasia collision?

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Abstract Low-temperature thermochronological data for the Eurasian foreland north of the Bitlis–Zagros suture zone suggest that the tectonic stresses related to the Arabian collision during mid-Miocene time were transmitted efficiently over large distances, focusing preferentially at rheological discontinuities. Since the late Middle Miocene a new tectonic regime has been active as the westwards translation of Anatolia is accommodating most of the Arabia–Eurasia convergence, thus precluding the efficient transfer of stress northwards. Apatite fission-track data from the central Lesser Caucasus show that a portion of this orogen underwent a discrete phase of cooling/exhumation at 18–12 Ma (late Early–early Middle Miocene) as a result of the structural reactivation of a segment of the Late Cretaceous–Palaeogene Sevan–Akera suture zone. This inference contradicts the notion that the post-collisional history of the study area was dominated by strike-slip tectonics with relatively minor dip-slip components. Reactivation and exhumation was focused along those segments of the suture zone at high angles to the inferred collisional stress field; the remaining areas were not exhumed enough to expose a new apatite partial annealing zone and thus retained the thermochronological record of a phase of Late Cretaceous cooling/exhumation associated with ophiolite obduction and the following continental collision along the suture zone.