Unstable Asia: active deformation of Siberia revealed by drainage shifts

Regional incision and lateral shifts of rivers in the West Siberian Basin and surrounding areas show the action of long wavelength surface tilting, directed away from the Urals and Central Asian mountains and towards the Siberian Craton. In the north of the basin, surface uplift of individual folds is recorded by local lateral drainage migration. Lateral slopes of river valleys vary in gradient from 0.001 to 0.0001, generally decreasing with increasing river discharge. As a result of this surface deformation significant drainage shifts are taking place in three of the longest and highest discharge river systems on Earth: the Yenisei, Ob' and Irtysh. The deformation is most plausibly caused by subtle faulting at depth, below the thick basin fill of Mesozoic and Lower Cenozoic sediments. Active deformation of western Siberia appears to represent a previously unrecognised, far-field effect of the India–Eurasia collision, up to ∼1500 km north of the limit of major seismicity and mountain building. It adds ∼2.5 × 106 km2 to the region deformed by the collision, which is an area greater than the Himalayas and Tibet combined. It is also an analogue for the formation of low-angle unconformities in terrestrial sedimentary basins on the periphery of other orogenic belts

Out of Africa: detrital zircon provenance of central Madagascar and Neoproterozoic terrane transfer across the Mozambique ocean

The Neoproterozoic East African Orogen reflects closure of the Mozambique Ocean and collision of the Congo and Dharwar cratons. This palaeogeographic change and its environmental consequences are poorly understood, but new detrital zircon ages from Madagascar and published data from elsewhere provide evidence for multiple ocean basins and two-stage collision. We propose that central Madagascar rifted from the Congo Craton and crossed a Palaeomozambique Ocean to collide with the Dharwar Craton at c. 700 Ma, opening a Neomozambique Ocean in its wake. Closure of the Neomozambique Ocean at c. 600 Ma juxtaposed the Congo and Dharwar cratons and resulted in prolonged collisional orogenesis concluding at c. 500 Ma

Evidence against the core/cover interpretation of the southern sector of the Menderes Massif, west Turkey

The Menderes Massif, in western Anatolia, has been described as a lithological succession comprising a basal 'Precambrian gneissic core of sedimentary origin' overlain in sequence by 'Palaeozoic schist' and 'Mesozoic-Cenozoic marble' forming the envelope. The boundary between core and schist envelope was interpreted as a major unconformity, the 'Supra-Pan-African unconformity'. By contrast, our field observations and geochemical data show that around the southern side of Besparmak Mountain, north of Selimiye (Milas), the protoliths of highly deformed, mylonitized augen gneisses are granitoid rocks intrusive into the adjacent Palaeozoic metasedimentary schists. The field relationships indicate the age of intrusion to be younger than late Permian and there is no evidence for the existence of either an exposed Precambrian basement or the 'Supra-Pan-African unconformity' in this sector of the Menderes Massif