Data Publication

Paleomagnetic data from Kope-Dagh, Northeast Iran

Mattei, Massimo | Visconti, Andrea Leonardo | Cifelli, Francesca | Nozaem, Reza | Winkler, Aldo | Sagnotti, Leonardo

GFZ Data Services

(2023)

This dataset includes paleomagnetic data from 70 sampling sites, collected in northeastern Iran during two campaigns carried out in August 2016 and September 2017 (Table 1). The data are supplement to Mattei et al. (2019). Data allow to reconstruct the rotation history of the outer margin of the Eurasia-Arabia collision area represented by the Ala-Dagh, Binalud and Kopeh-Dagh mountain belts. The sampled formations are red beds units from the Lower Cretaceous Shurijeh Fm. and from the Middle-Upper Miocene Upper Red Fm (URF). Paleomagnetic results from all the sampled areas show a homogeneous amount of clockwise (CW) rotations measured in the above-mentioned Formations. These paleomagnetic results suggest that the oroclinal bending process that caused the curvature of Alborz mountain belt in north Iran after the Middle-Late Miocene, also extended to the Ala-Dagh, Binalud and Kopeh-Dagh mountain belts, at the north-eastern border of the Arabia-Eurasia deforming zone. This pattern of vertical axis rotations is inconsistent with the present-day kinematics of the northern Iranian blocks as described by seismicity and GPS data, suggesting that the tectonic processes responsible for the bending of northern Iran mountain chains are no longer active and that the westward motion of the South Caspian basin, and therefore the initiation of opposite strike-slip motion along the Ashk-Abad and Shahrud faults, occurred very recently (∼2My ago).

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