Field observations from Gonto La (southern Tibet), a pass through the high Himalaya, reveal a continuous, planar, ~l&N-dipping detachment horizon (the Gonto La detachment). The detachment juxtaposes Tethyan dark slates over a footwall of extensive leucogranite of the Khula Kangri pluton, intruded into an injection complex layer regarded as an early Southern Tibet Detachment System (STDS) horizo...

The paleobiodiversity of the Volutidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda) of the Ranikot Group (Sindh, Pakistan) and particularly of the Lakhra Formation (SBZ 5 biozone, Earliest Eocene), is reconsidered on the basis of new material collected during recent field trips. Ten new species are described (Mitreola brohii sp. nov., Lyrischapa vredenburgi sp. nov., L. brevispira sp. nov., Athleta (Volutopupa) cith...

Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran is one of the hypersaline lakes of world. In the Urmia region a Cenozoic island arc was formed by northeastward subduction of Neo-Tethyan oceanic plate beneath central Iran; the lake is therefore located in the fore-arc basin tectonic setting. Satellite imagery of the Urmia region illustrates that the trend of faults are in two main NE-SW and NW-SE directions. Th...

[1] The Eocene India-Eurasia collision is a first order tectonic event whose nature and chronology remains controversial. We test two end-member collision scenarios using coupled global plate motion-subduction models. The first, conventional model, invokes a continental collision soon after 60 Ma between a maximum extent Greater India and an Andean-style Eurasian margin. The alternative scenari...

New geochronological and geochemical data on magmatic activity from the India-Asia collision zone enables recognition of a distinct magmatic flare-up event that we ascribe to slab breakoff. This tie-point in the collisional record can be used to back-date to the time of initial impingement of the Indian continent with the Asian margin. Continental arc magmatism in southern Tibet during 80-40 Ma...

Abstraet The amount and type of organic matter present in an exceptionally complete upper Aptian to lower Cenomanian sequence of sediments from ODP site 763 on the Exmouth Plateau has been determined. Organic carbon concentrations average 0.2~o. Organic matter is marine in origin, and its production and preservation was low over the ca. 20-million-year interval recorded by this sequence. Becaus...

The Capitanian (Late Guadalupian) Maokou Formation at Chaotian in northern Sichuan, South China, is composed mainly of shallow marine shelf carbonates deposited on the Tethyan side of South China. By detailed field mapping and scientific drilling, we newly found out unique fossil assemblages and a sharp lithologic change in the upper part of the Maokou Formation. The main part of the Maokou For...

As an important tectonic unit of Eastern Tethyan domain, Sanjiang orogenic belt started from the expansion, subduction, subtraction and closure Paleozoic Paleo-Tethys Ocean, went through opening Neo-Tethys Ocean subduction collision process Indian continent ended in Himalayan comprehensive intracontinental convergence uplift orogeny, forming a giant composite composed several island arc belts s...