Nalan Lom

Heidelberg University · Institut für Geowissenschaften

Orogenic belts, the main factories of continental crust and the most efficient agents of continental deformation, are commonly extremely complex structures. Every orogenic belt is unique in detail, but they are generally similar to each other, having mainly been products of subduction and continental collision. Because of that common origin, they a...

The Istanbul region is a part of a bigger continental fragment called the Rhodope-Pontide Fragment. Within this continental fragment, the Istanbul Zone consists, at the base, of a Neoproterozoic middle to high-grade crystalline rocks with relicts of volcanic arc and continental crust, which are not observed in Istanbul itself, but farther east near...

Tectonic inheritance and structure reactivation have been of interest to geologists since it was noticed in the mid-nineteenth century that younger structures in an area tend to follow the direction of older structures. Three kinds of relationship may exist between these older and younger structures: younger structures may follow the older ones and...

This paper presents an inventory of the relevant information to delineate the Tethyside sutures and the continental blocks they stitch in Turkey and to summarise their history. A palinspastic palaeogeographic/palaeotectonic interpretation is reserved for the second part of this paper and in a third paper we hope to deal with its neotectonic episode...

A hitherto unknown Neoproterozoic orogenic system, the Saharides, is described in North Africa. It formed during the 900–500-Ma interval. The Saharides involved large subduction accretion complexes occupying almost the entire Arabian Shield and much of Egypt and parts of the small Precambrian inliers in the Sahara including the Ahaggar mountains. T...

Deformation in orogenic belts is typically widely distributed but may be localized to form discrete, fast-moving fault zones enclosing semi-rigid microplates. An example is the Anatolian microplate, which is extruding westwards from the East Anatolian Plateau in the Arabia-Eurasia collision zone along the North and East Anatolian Faults that cause...

Deformation in orogenic belts is typically widely distributed but may be localized to form discrete, fast-moving fault zones enclosing semi-rigid microplates. An example is the Anatolian microplate, which is extruding westwards from the East Anatolian Plateau in the Arabia-Eurasia collision zone along the North and East Anatolian Faults that cause...

Reassessment of the Neoproterozoic evolution of the North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula revealed the presence of a single orogenic belt, the Saharides, starting from the West African Craton in the west to the eastern margin of Arabian Shield in the east. This orogenic event created a large subduction-accretion complex during the Tonian-Cambrian...

The Cimmerian Continent is the narrow continental strip that rifted from the northeastern Gondwana-Land margin mostly during the Permian between the present-day Balkan regions and Indonesia and collided with the Laurasian margin sometime between the latest Triassic and the late Jurassic, in places possibly even in the earliest Cretaceous. In contra...

Apparent polar wander paths (APWPs) calculated from paleomagnetic data describe the motion of tectonic plates relative to the Earth’s rotation axis through geological time, providing a quantitative paleogeographic framework for studying the evolution of Earth’s interior, surface, and atmosphere. Previous APWPs were typically calculated from collect...

Continental reconstructions became a geological problem after the rise of continental drift. With plate tectonics, it became easy to make reconstructions once ocean-floor magnetic anomaly stripes became available. However, for times before the medial Jurassic, continental reconstructions must depend on palaeomagnetism, palaeoclimatology and palaeob...

Neogene basins/grabens along with exhumed core complexes make up the fundamental components of western Anatolia within the geologic framework of the Aegean Extensional Province. The Neogene basins are divided into two based on their orientation and contrasting lithostratigraphic packages: (1) the NE–SW basins that are dominated by materials either...

The northwest-southeast-trending Zagros Fold-and Thrust Belt in south Iran resulted from the late Oligocene to the early Miocene collision of the Arabian and Central Iran blocks. The Zagros Palaeozoic basin holds the key to reveal the tectonic setting of the earlier stages in the development of the Tethyan realm. We aim to document the Palaeozoic t...

Submittted for peer review to Earth-Science Reviews. Highlights: 1. New paleomagnetic reference frame for the last 320 million years. 2. Global apparent polar wander path computed from site-level data rather than poles. 3. First-order geometry similar to previous models but with smaller uncertainties. 4. Peaks in apparent polar wander may result f...

Ophiolites, fragments of oceanic lithosphere exposed on land, are typically found as isolated klippen in intensely deformed fold-thrust belts spanning hundreds to thousands of kilometers along-strike. Ophiolites whose geochemistry indicates that they formed above subduction zones, may have been relics of larger, once-coherent, oceanic lithosphere t...

The dynamics of slab detachment and associated geological fingerprints have been inferred from various numerical and analogue models. These invariably use a setup with slab-pull-driven convergence in which a slab detaches below a mantle-stationary trench after the arrest of plate convergence due to arrival of continental lithosphere. In contrast, g...

Ophiolites, fragments of oceanic lithosphere exposed on land, are typically found as isolated klippen in intensely deformed fold-thrust belts spanning hundreds to thousands of kilometers along-strike. Ophiolites whose geochemistry indicates that they formed above subduction zones, may have been relics of larger, once-coherent, oceanic lithosphere t...

The dynamics of slab detachment and associated geological fingerprints are inferred from numerical and analogue models that use a setup with slab-pull-driven convergence in which a slab detaches following the arrest of convergence following continent arrival in a mantle-stationary trench. In contrast, geological reconstructions show that post-detac...

To the memory of Nicholas John (Nick) Archibald (1951−2014), master of cratonic geology. Cratons, defined by their resistance to deformation, are guardians of crustal and lithospheric material over billion-year time scales. Archean and Proterozoic rocks can be found in many places on earth, but not all of them represent cratonic areas. Some of thes...

A major new Neoproterozoic orogenic system belonging to the larger Pan-African deformational realm, the Saharides, is described in North Africa, which formed from about 900 to 500 Ma ago. The Saharides, a Turkic-type orogenic complex similar to the Altaids of central and northwestern Asia, involved major subduction-accretion complexes occupying alm...

The Eastern Iranian Orocline provides us several opportunities to study magmatism in relation to tectonic events. The buckling of this orocline is accompanied by an extreme extension in its Khorasan outer arc during which a calc-alkaline dike swarm, generally andesite to dacite, intruded in a radial pattern into the Paleocene-Eocene volcano-sedimen...

When ¸Sengör proposed the existence of the Cimmerian Continent exactly forty years ago, he presented it as an ensialic arc ripped from the northeastern margin of Gondwana-Land above a southwest-dipping subduction zone. This tearing, he believed, was the cause of the opening of the Neo-Tethys. In subsequent years he and his co-workers elaborated on...

Cratons consist of Archean and Proterozoic rocks on their surface. Although they are underlain by thick litho-sphere their top surfaces are usually near sea level. Some recent models argue that craton formation results from crustal thickening caused by shortening and subsequent removal of the upper crust by erosion. This process would expose a high...

In some recent models, craton formation was ascribed to excessive crustal thickening and subsequent removal of the upper crust by a diverse set of mechanisms. We have compiled data from the world’s cratons to show that in by far the most the greenschist-grade metamorphics and even supracrustal sedimentary rocks are preserved and with few exceptions...

Spatially continuous rock assemblages that share similar environmental evolution or structural features can be classified as a single tectonic unit. This approach enables to link dispersed units or massifs with each other and sometimes can be subjective, depending on the classification criteria. The relationship and the nature of the contact betwee...

After the Hercynian collision in Europe, the activity of the Protogonos arc ceased, but it continued its activity farther east, east of present-day Bulgaria. In Turkey, during the Permian, the entire area of the country was affected by extensional tectonics leading to the generation of supra-subduction zone ensimatic arcs, pre-arc-spreading ophioli...

The Hercynian Orogenic Belt occupies a 8000 km long swath from the Carpathians to the Huastecan Belt in Mexico and a 1000 km wide swath from the North Sea to the Sahara. Its formation took place in the late Carboniferous and resulted in the final amalgamation of Pangaea. The pre-collisional palaeogeography and formation of this complex and re-defor...

Plate boundaries in continents almost always appear as wide plate boundary zones. The concept of a plate boundary zone was first defined by Burke, Grippi and Şengör in 1980 and later became popular as our knowledge of the seismicity and current motions all over the world increased. In Europe, extensive deformation southwest of the Tornquist-Teissey...

The city of İstanbul lies at the boundary between Europe and Asia in NW Turkey. Beside the city’s unique geographical position its geology is also unique. İstanbul sits on an isolated and well developed, continuous Palaeozoic sequence. The Palaeozoic sequence is unmetamorphosed despite the fact that it was affected by three orogenies; Hercynian, Ci...

Istanbul which is one of the most populous and areally most extensive cities of the World, lies athwart the boundary between Europe and Asia in NW Turkey and sits on an isolated Palaeozoic transgressive passive margin sequence. This sequence is inferred to lie on a latest Precambrian basement and shows no evidence of metamorphism despite the fact t...

In southeastern Turkey, the NE-trending Antakya Graben forms an asymmetric depression filled by Pliocene marine siliciclastic sediment, Pleistocene to Recent fluvial terrace sediment, and alluvium. Along the Mediterranean coast of the graben, marine terrace deposits sit at different elevations ranging from 2 to 180 m above present sea level, with a...

The Permian extinction was not universal as at least some sections in Japan, New Zealand and the US Cordillera show continuous faunal records and no anoxia. By contrast, evidence for Capitanian and Changsingian extinctions in and around the Palaeo-Tethys is ubiquitous. This has led to the suggestion that the major Permian extinctions were confined...

The Antakya Graben, in southeastern Turkey, is a NE-trending asymmetric depression delimited by normal faults in its southeastern part. Pliocene regressive marine siliciclastics, Pleistocene to Recent fluvial terraces and alluvium filled the graben. Along the Mediterranean coast, marine terraces flank both side of the graben at elevations ranging f...

This paper is an exercise in “public thinking”, because we are not yet commited to what it concludes, on account of our ignorance of the Mauritenide evolution in terms of our present conclusion. The only excuse for presenting it here is the invitation to do so by Chris Scotese. We then hope that the audience might help us straighten out our thinkin...

Antakya region, southeastern Turkey, is located among the northern part of sinistral Dead Sea Fault Zone (DSFZ), southern part of the sinistral East Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ) and eastern continuation of the Cyprus Arc. This study aims to investigate the geometry, structure, and activity of faults between Antakya (Antioch) and Samanda˘g (Seleukeia...