Structural Geology and Exhumation of the Paleogene Southern Sivas Fold and Thrust Belt, Central Anatolia, Turkey

Abstract:

The Anatolian plate (Turkey) was formed during the late Miocene-Pliocene transition from contractional strain in central and eastern Anatolia (collision) to localized strike-slip faulting along inherited collisional structures (escape tectonics). Structural inheritance undoubtedly played a role in this major plate boundary reorganization, although its significance is not well understood. Considerable uncertainty also exists regarding the timing and kinematics of Tauride-Eurasia collision, initial Arabia-Eurasia collision, and the terminal closure of the Neotethys Ocean.

The Sivas Basin is a ~E-W-elongate collisional forearc basin located between the Tauride micro-continent in the south and the Pontide Arc along the southern Eurasian margin in the north. Well-exposed contractional structures in Paleocene-Eocene marine strata of the Southern Sivas fold and thrust belt (SSFTB) provide an excellent opportunity to investigate the timing and kinematics of both Tauride and Arabian collisions and their potential roles in localizing strain and facilitating tectonic escape. We use detailed geologic mapping, structural analysis and detrital geo/thermochronology to investigate the magnitude, style, and timing of collision-related crustal shortening across the SSFTB.

The structural geology of the SSFTB is characterized by ENE- to ESE-trending, gently plunging fault propagation folds with slight asymmetry towards the north. Vergence on thrust faults is mainly towards the north, although a few previously unmapped faults are south-vergent. Detrital apatite fission track data from Paleocene-Eocene strata reveal a single phase of rapid exhumation ca. ~36-31 Ma, which may be related to either Tauride or initial Arabian collision. We propose that structural growth of the SSFTB at this time played a major role in marine basin isolation and early Oligocene evaporite deposition. In the central and northern Sivas Basin where salt was likely thickest, salt tectonics was initiated by northward-tilting of the basin and nonmarine sediment loading from sources in the growing orogenic wedge of the SSFTB to the south.