Abstract
Previous tectonic reconstructions of the Iranian segment1–4 of eastern Tethys have assumed that the stratigraphic positions of ophiolites from Zagros (late Cretaceous) and Makran (early Tertiary) represent the time of initial oceanic plate displacement. We present 40Ar–39Ar age spectra for mineral separates from metamorphic assemblages associated with the ophiolites of the eastern Zagros and the western Makran, Iran. One of the Zagros samples is from an amphibolite associated with metamorphosed basic and ultrabasic rocks while the other is from metamorphic olistolith within radiolarites, south of the main Zagros ophiolite body. The Makran sample is from a block of amphibolite contained within metamorphosed harzburgites. The apparent ages suggest that initial oceanic plate disruption and tectonic emplacement of the Zagros and Makran ophiolites occurred in the middle Jurassic (∼170 Myr ago) with further displacements in the late Cretaceous (∼97 Myr and ∼89 Myr ago). The similarity of the Jurassic age with ophiolite emplacement ages in Yugoslavia5 and Greece6 is possible evidence of a middle Jurassic coUision of an early Mesozoic Tethyan ridge system with both eastern Europe and central Asia.
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Haynes, S., Reynolds, P. Early development of Tethys and Jurassic ophiolite displacement. Nature 283, 561–563 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1038/283561a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/283561a0
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