Continental accretion and incremental deformation in the thermochronologic evolution of the Lesser Caucasus

Apatite fission-track analysis and thermochronologic statistical modeling of Precambrian-Oligocenc plutonic and metamorphic rocks from the Lesser Caucasus resolve two discrete cooling episodes.Cooling occurred during incremental crustal shortening due to obduction and continental accretion along the margins of the northern branch of the Neotethys.(1)The thermochronometric record of a Late Cretaceous(Turonian-Maastrichtian)cooling/exhumation event,coeval to widespread ophiolite obduction,is still present only in a relatively small area of the upper plate of the Amasia-Sevan-Akera(ASA)suture zone,i.e.the suture marking the final closure of the northern Neotethys during the Paleogene.Such area has not been affected by significant later exhumation.(2)Rapid cooling/exhumation occurred in the Early-Middle Miocene in both the lower and upper plates of the ASA suture zone,obscuring previous thermochronologic signatures over most of the study area.Miocene contractional reactivation of the ASA suture zone occurred contemporaneously with the main phase of shortening and exhumation along the Bitlis suture zone marking the closure of the southern branch of the Neotethys and the ensuing ArabiaEurasia collision.Miocene collisional stress from the Bitlis suture zone was transmitted northward across the Anatolian hinterland,which was left relatively undeformed,and focused along preexisting structural discontinuities such as the eastern Pontides and the ASA suture zone.

Two-step exhumation of Caucasian intraplate rifts:A proxy of sequential plate-margin collisional orogenies

Intraplate structural deformation is diagnostic of tectonic stress regime changes linked to plate interactions and can result from superposed tectonic events whose single contributions are hardly distinguishable.In this paper,we present a set of integrated thermochronologic inverse models along a 140 km-long transect across the central Greater Caucasus and the adjacent Adjara-Trialeti fold-and-thrust belt of Georgia,two intraplate orogens produced by structural inversion of parallel continental rift zones located on the Eurasian plate.Our dataset allows to distinguish discrete and superposed deformation episodes and quantify their respective contributions to orogenic exhumation.The integration of(U-Th)/He analysis on apatite and zircon,fission-track analysis on apatite,and peak-temperature determinations(clay mineralogy,organic matter petrography,Raman spectroscopy)shows that structural inversion was punctuated by two incremental steps starting respectively in the latest Cretaceous and the mid-Miocene.Latest Cretaceous partial inversion of the Greater Caucasus is documented here for the first time and placed in a geographically wider context of coeval deformation.The two episodes of intraplate structural inversion,exhumation,and sediment generation are chronologically and physically correlated with docking of(i)the Anatolide-Tauride-Armenian terrane(Late Cretaceous-Paleocene)and(ii)Arabia(Miocene hard collision)against the southern Eurasian plate margin.Intraplate deformation in the Caucasian domain was triggered by far-field propagation of plate-margin collisional stress which focused preferentially along rheologically weak rift zones.