Apatite fission track data from central Anatolian granitoids (Turkey): Constraints on Neo-Tethyan closure

Abstract

Apatite fission track age versus elevation profiles and temperature-time-path modeling indicate an early to middle Paleocene (57-62 Ma) rapid exhumation of the Middle to Late Cretaceous granitoids in central Anatolia and an Oligocene (28-30 Ma) rapid exhumation of the Eocene Kösedaǧ batholith in the NE Sivas region, part of eastern central Pontides. The early to middle Paleocene rapid exhumation is thought to result from a regional compressional regime following the collision of the Eurasian Plate and the Tauride-Anatolide Platform at the closure of the Izmir-Ankara-Erzincan branch of the northern Neo-Tethys. The Oligocene accelerated exhumation of the Kösedaǧ batholith is contemporaneous with the Oligo-Miocene closure of the southern Neo-Tethys which juxtaposed the amalgamated Eurasian and Tauride-Anatolide Platform and the African-Arabian Plate along the Bitlis-Zagros suture in southeast Anatolia. The compressional regime due to this collision affected a large area between the Greater Caucasus in the north and northern African-Arabian Plate in the south. Copyright 2007 by the American Geophysical Union.