The collision between the Eurasian and Arabian plates along the 2400-km-long Bitlis-Zagros thrust zone isolated the Mediterranean from the Indian Ocean and has been linked to extension of the Aegean, rifting of the Red Sea, and the formation of the North and East Anatolian fault systems. However, the timing of the collision is poorly constrained, and estimates range from Late Cretaceous to late Miocene. Here, we report the fi rst apatite fissiontrack\ud (AFT) ages from the Bitlis-Zagros thrust zone. The AFT samples are distributed over the 450 km length of the Bitlis thrust zone in southeast Turkey and include metamorphic\ud rocks and Eocene sandstones. Despite the disparate lithology and large distance, the AFT ages point consistently to exhumation between 18 and 13 Ma. The AFT ages, along with a critical appraisal of regional stratigraphy, indicate that the last oceanic lithosphere between the Arabian and Eurasian plates was consumed by the early Miocene (ca. 20 Ma). The results imply that Aegean extension predated the Arabia-Eurasia collision

In the southern Apennines fold-and-thrust belt, thermal indicators record exhumation of sedimentary units from depths locally in excess of 5 km. The thrust belt is made of allochthonous sedimentary units that overlie a 6-8-km-thick, carbonate footwall succession. The latter, continuous with the foreland Apulian PlatForm, is deformed by reverse faults involving the underlying basement. Therefore, a switch from thin-skinned to thick-skinned thrusting occurred as the Apulian Platform carbonates - and the underlying thick continental lithosphere-were deformed during the latest shortening stages. Apatite fission track data, showing cooling ages ranging between 9.2 ± 1.0 and 1.5 ± 0.8 Ma, indicate that exhumation marks these late tectonic stages, probably initiating with the buttressing of the allochthonous wedge against the western margin of the Apulian Platform. Pliocene-Pleistocene foreland advancing of the allochthonous units exceeds the total amounts of slip that, based on cross-section balancing and restoration, could be transferred to the base of the allochthon from the underlying thick-skinned structures. This suggests that emplacement of the allochthon above the western portion of the Apulian Platform carbonates was followed by gravitational readjustments within the allochthonous wedge, coeval - and partly associated with - thick-skinned shortening at depth. The related denudation processes are interpreted to have played a primary role in tectonic exhumation

In northern Calabria (Italy), the metasedimentary succession of the Lungro–Verbicaro tectonic unit preserves mineral assemblages suggesting underthrusting to depths in excess of 40 km. Internal deformation of these rocks occurred continuously during the following decompression. Index mineral composition associated with progressively younger tectonic fabrics indicates that a substantial part of the structural evolution took place within the blueschist-facies P – T field. Despite their tectonic and metamorphic history, the rocks of the Lungro–Verbicaro Unit preserve significant sedimentary and palaeontological features allowing correlations with successions included in adjacent thrust sheets and the reconstruction of the Mesozoic continental margin architecture. The subduction–exhumation cycle recorded by the Lungro–Verbicaro Unit is entirely of Miocene age. This portion of the Apulia continental palaeomargin was involved in convergence-related deformation not earlier than the Aquitanian. The integration of our results with available constraints on the tectonic evolution of the Apennine–Calabrian Arc system suggests that subduction and most of the subsequent exhumation of the Lungro–Verbicaro Unit occurred, up to Langhian time, at maximum vertical rates in excess of 15 mm a ⁻¹ . The exhumation process was then completed, at much slower rates (<2 mm a ⁻¹ ) in Late Miocene time, as indicated by both apatite fission-track data and stratigraphic information.