Partitioning Anatolian Kinematics into Tectonic Escape and Slab Rollback Dominated Domains

Anatolia is the global archetype of tectonic escape,as witnessed by the devastating 2023 Kahramanmaraş Earthquake sequence,and the 2020 Samos Earthquake,which show different kinematics related to the framework of the escape tectonics.Global Positioning System(GPS)motions of the wedge-shaped plate differ regionally from northwestwards to southwestwards(from east to west).Anatolia was extruded westward from the Arabian-Eurasian collision along the North and East Anatolian fault systems,rotating counterclockwise into the oceanic free-faces of the Mediterranean and Aegean,with dramatic extension of western Anatolia in traditional interpretations.However,which is the dominant mechanism for this change in kinematics,extrusion related to the Arabia/Eurasia collision or rollback of the African slab beneath western Anatolia is still unclear.To assess the dominant driving mechanisms across Anatolia,we analyze recent GPS velocity datasets,and decomposed them into N-S and E-W components,revealing that westward motion is essentially constant across the whole plate and consistent with the slip rates of the North and East Anatolia fault zones,while southward components increase dramatically in the transition area between central and western Anatolia,where a slab tear is suggested.This phenomenon is related to different tectonic driving mechanisms.The ArabiaEurasia collision drives the Anatolian Plate uniformly westwards while western Anatolia is progressively more affected by the southward retreating African subducting slab west of the Aegean/Cypriot slab tear,which significantly increases the southward component of the velocity field and causes the apparent curve of the whole modern velocity field.The 2020 and 2023 earthquake focal mechanisms also confirm that the northward colliding Arabian Plate forced Anatolia to the west,and the retreating African slab is pulling the upper plate of western Anatolian apart in extension.We propose that the Anatolian Plate is moving westwards as one plate with an additional component of extension in its west caused by the local driving mechanism,slab rollback(with the boundary above the slab tear around Isparta),rather than separate microplates or a near-pole spin of the entire Anatolian Plate,and the collisionrelated extrusion is the dominant mechanism of tectonic escape.

Sedimentary fill history of the Huicheng Basin in the West Qinling Mountains and associated constraints on Mesozoic intracontinental tectonic evolution

The Qinling Orogenic Belt is divided commonly by the Fengxian-Taibai strike-slip shear zone and the Huicheng Basin into the East and West Qinling mountains, which show significant geological differences after the Indosinian orogeny. The Fengxian-Taibai fault zone and the Meso-Cenozoic Huicheng Basin, situated at the boundary of the East and West Qinling, provide a natural laboratory for tectonic analysis and sedimentological study of intracontinental tectonic evolution of the Qin- ling Orogenic Belt. In order to explain the dynamic development of the Huicheng Basin and elucidate its post-orogenic tecton- ic evolution at the junction of the East and West Qinling, we studied the geometry and kinematics of fault zones between the blocks of West Qinling, as well as the sedimentary fill history of the Huicheng Basin. First, we found that after the collisional orogeny in the Late Triassic, post-orogenic extensional collapse occurred in the Early and Middle Jurassic within the Qinling Orogenic Belt, resulting in a series of rift basins. Second, in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, a NE-SW compressive stress field caused large-scale sinistral strike-slip faults in the Qinling Orogenic Belt, causing intracontinental escape tectonics at the junction of the East and West Qinling, including eastward finite escape of the East Qinling micro-plate and southwest lateral escape of the Bikou Terrane. Meanwhile, the strike-slip-related Early Cretaceous sedimentary basin was formed with a fight-order echelon arrangement in sinistral shear zones along the southern margin of the Huicheng fault. Overall during the Mesozoic, the Huicheng Basin and surrounding areas experienced four tectonic evolutionary stages, including extensional rift basin development in the Early and Middle Jurassic, intense compressive uplift in the Late Jurassic, formation of a strike-slip extensional basin in the Early Cretaceous, and compressive uplift in the Late Cretaceous.