Review of Middle East Paleozoic plate tectonics

The Paleozoic Middle East terranes, neighboring the present-day Arabian and Levant plates, are shown by most authors to consist of ten major tectonic units: (1 and 2) the Helmand and Farah terranes of Afghanistan, southwest Pakistan and southeast Turkmenistan; (3 to 6) the Alborz, Central Iran (Lut, Yazd and Tabas) and Sanandaj-Sirjan terranes of Iran, and Northwest Iran (possibly extending into eastern Turkey); (7 and 8) the Pontides and Taurides terranes of Turkey; and (9 and 10) the Greater and Lesser Caucasus terranes between the Caspian and Black seas (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and southwest Russia). Published plate-tectonic reconstructions indicate that all ten terranes may have broken off from either: (1) the Gondwana Supercontinent in the mid-Silurian as part of the Hun Superterrane; or (2) the Pangea Supercontinent during the mid-Permian - Triassic as part of the Cimmeria Superterrane. To the north of Gondwana and Pangea, three successively younger Tethyan oceans evolved: (1) Proto-Tethys (Cambrian - Devonian); (2) Paleo-Tethys (mid-Silurian - Mesozoic); and (3) Neo-Tethys (mid-Permian - Cenozoic). Two regional Paleozoic unconformities in the Arabian Plate are generally linked to major regional-scale structural events, and commonly correlated to the Caledonian and Hercynian orogenies. These orogenies took place many thousands of kilometers away from the Arabian Plate and are considered unlikely causes for these unconformities. Instead, the breakaway of the Hun and Cimmeria superterranes are considered as alternative near-field tectonic sources. The older unconformity (middle Paleozoic event), represented by a mid-Silurian to Middle Devonian hiatus in North Arabia (Iraq and Syria), reflects an episode of epeirogenic uplift, which might be related to the mid-Silurian rift of the Hun Superterrane. The younger mid-Carboniferous Arabia-wide angular unconformity involved compressional faulting and epeirogenic uplift, and might be related to the earliest phase of subduction by the Paleo-Tethyan crust beneath Cimmeria (Sanandaj-Sirjan and nearby regions) before it broke off. Based on our review and regional considerations, we assign the Helmand, Farah, Central Iran, Alborz, Sanandaj-Sirjan, Northwest Iran, Lesser Caucasus, Taurides and Pontides to Cimmeria, whereas the Greater Caucasus is considered Hunic.