In southeastern Turkey, the NE-trending Antakya Graben forms an asymmetric depression filled by Pliocene marine siliciclastic sediment, Pleistocene to Recent fluvial terrace sediment, and alluvium. Along the Mediterranean coast of the graben, marine terrace deposits sit at different elevations ranging from 2 to 180 m above present sea level, with ages ranging from MIS 2 to 11. A multisegmented, dominantly sinistral fault lying along the graben may connect the Cyprus Arc in the west to the Amik Triple Junction on the Dead Sea Fault (DSF) in the east. Normal faults, which are younger than the sinistral ones, bound the graben’s southeastern margin. The westward escape of the continental İskenderun Block, delimited by sinistral fault segments belonging to the DSF in the east and the Eastern Anatolian Fault in the north caused the development of a sinistral transtensional tectonic regime, which has opened the Antakya Graben since the Pliocene. In the later stages of this opening, normal faults developed along the southeastern margin that caused the graben to tilt to the southwest, leading to differential uplift of Mediterranean coastal terraces. Most of these normal faults remain active. In addition to these tectonic movements, Pleistocene sea level changes in the Mediterranean affected the geomorphological evolution of the area.

Significance: A method without biostratigraphy is employed to delineate a hitherto unknown, major orogenic system of Neoproterozoic age in North Africa and Arabia in which some 5 million km²of juvenile continental crust may have been generated in some 400 Ma, i.e., 0.44 km³/a assuming a minimum thickness of 35 km for the generated crust, thus slightly less than the 1/3 of the annual average crustal growth rate globally and similar to the crustal growth rate in the Altaids of Asia between 600 and 140 Ma, supporting the idea that the formation of the continental crust has been continuous throughout earth history, albeit with fluctuating intensity. Our method can be applied to reconstruct other complex Precambrian orogenic systems.

The Istanbul region is a part of a bigger continental fragment called the Rhodope-Pontide Fragment. Within this continental fragment, the Istanbul Zone consists, at the base, of a Neoproterozoic middle to high-grade crystalline rocks with relicts of volcanic arc and continental crust, which are not observed in Istanbul itself, but farther east near Zonguldak. This basement is overlain by a continuous, well-developed sedimentary sequence extending from the Lower Ordovician to the Lower Carboniferous. The Carboniferous flysch marks the progress of a shortening event. This event led to the folding and faulting of the Palaeozoic sequence which was intruded by an uppermost Permian granitoid and unconformably overlain by the Upper Permian to Lower Triassic red sandstones and conglomerates. The Triassic series is better formed east of Istanbul showing a typical transgressive development. The Jurassic sequence is absent, most likely as a result of the closure of the Palaeo-Tethys and the resultant genera... RÉSUMÉ Géologie et stratigraphie de la région d'Istanbul. La région d'Istanbul fait partie d'un fragment continental connu sous le nom de Rhodope-Pontides. Dans cet ensemble, la zone d'Istanbul comprend, à la base, un socle cristallin néoprotérozoïque contenant des reliques de croûte océanique, d'arcs volcaniques et de croûte continentale, qui affleurent seulement à l'est d'Istanbul, près de Zonguldak. Ce socle est recouvert par une séquence sédimentaire continue, bien développée de l'Ordovicien inférieur au Carbonifère inférieur. Le flysch carbonifère reflète une tectonique compressive qui a affecté toute la séquence paléozoïque. Celle-ci a été recoupée par l'intrusion de granitoïdes permiens, puis recouverte en discordance par les grès rouges et les conglomérats du Permien supérieur-Trias inférieur. Le Trias est présent à l'est d'Istanbul et montre un caractère transgressif. Le Jurassique est absent, probablement à cause de la fermeture de la Paléo- Téthys et la formation des Cimmerides qui en résultent...

Cratons, defined by their resistance to deformation, are guardians of crustal and lithospheric material over billion-year time scales. Archean and Proterozoic rocks can be found in many places on earth, but not all of them represent cratonic areas. Some of these old terrains, inappropriately termed “cratons” by some, have been parts of mobile belts and have experienced widespread deformations in response to mantle-plume-generated thermal weakening, uplift and consequent extension and/or various plate boundary deformations well into the Phanerozoic.It is a common misconception that cratons consist only of metamorphosed crystalline rocks at their surface, as shown by the indiscriminate designation of them by many as “shields.” Our compilation shows that this conviction is not completely true. Some recent models argue that craton formation results from crustal thickening caused by shortening and subsequent removal of the upper crust by erosion. This process would expose a high-grade metamorphic crust at the surface, but greenschist-grade metamorphic rocks and even unmetamorphosed supracrustal sedimentary rocks are widespread on some cratonic surfaces today, showing that craton formation does not require total removal of the upper crust. Instead, the granulitization of the roots of arcs may have been responsible for weighing down the collided and thickened pieces and keeping their top surfaces usually near sea level.In this study, we review the nature and origin of cratons on four well-studied examples. The Superior Province (the Canadian Shield), the Barberton Mountain (Kaapvaal province, South Africa), and the Yilgarn province (Western Australia) show the diversity of rocks with different origin and metamorphic degree at their surface. These fairly extensive examples are chosen because they are typical. It would have been impractical to review the entire extant cratonic surfaces on earth today. We chose the inappropriately named North China “Craton” to discuss the requirements to be classified as a craton.

Tectonic inheritance and structure reactivation have been of interest to geologists since it was noticed in the mid-nineteenth century that younger structures in an area tend to follow the direction of older structures. Three kinds of relationship may exist between these older and younger structures: younger structures may follow the older ones and repeat their function; younger structures may follow older ones, but function in the opposite sense to the older ones; and younger structures bear no relation to the older ones. These are named, respectively, resurrected, replacement and revolutionary structures. We present three examples, on three different scales, of tectonic inheritance and structure reactivation: Mesozoic and Cenozoic Europe on a continental scale; the US Rockies on a regional scale; and the Albula Pass in the Swiss Alps on an outcrop scale. We conclude that structure reactivation on a crustal scale occurs when the protective armour of the mantle lithosphere is removed and that, in such cases, resurrected and replacement structures form. In cratons with thick lithospheric roots, structure reactivation hardly ever occurs and when, in rare cases, it does occur, it commonly generates revolutionary structures. There can be no unique model for lithospheric strength.