Seismic imaging of Earth’s crust shows signs that subduction became a global phenomenon about 2 billion years ago.

The timings of the onset of oceanic spreading, subduction and collision are crucial in plate reconstructions, but not always straightforward to resolve. The Paleo‐Tethys evolution dominated the Paleozoic‐Early Mesozoic tectonics of West Asia, but the timeline of events is still poorly constrained. We present new detrital zircon ages from the Binalud Mountains of NE Iran, in order to determine the timing of tectonic events in the region, and the wider implications for regional tectonics, paleogeography and climate change. Consistent age patterns in Paleozoic clastic rocks show a dominant provenance from the Neoproterozoic basement of northern Gondwana. We interpret this as deposition on a long‐lasting passive continental margin after the initial spreading of the Paleo‐Tethys Ocean. Central Iran‐Eurasia collision caused coarse clastic deposition of the Mashhad Phyllite in a peripheral foreland basin on the Paleozoic sequence of the northern Central Iran Block. The Mashhad Phyllite yields age clusters at 450–250 Ma and 1,900–1,800 Ma, with a clear provenance from a long‐lived continental arc at the active Eurasian margin since the latest Ordovician. Analysis of the age spectra allows us to constrain the maximum depositional age of the Mashhad Phyllite as no later than 228 Ma. This age provides a tight constraint on the timing of initial collision between Central Iran and Eurasia, which also coincides with the Carnian Pluvial Event (CPE). Our new timing evidence of collision reinforces the previous speculation on the Paleo‐Tethys closure as a causal mechanism for the CPE.

The interplay between continental motions during the assembly of Pangaea and late Palaeozoic climate change, including severe glaciation and global aridification, remains enigmatic. Here we identify the provenance of Permian–Early Triassic sediments that recorded climate change of North China and estimate palaeoelevation to constrain tectonic-climate interaction during the assembly of northeast Pangaea. Detrital zircon U-Pb-Hf analysis indicates the sediments were locally sourced from the ancient basement and associated with a late Palaeozoic (410–260 million years ago) continental arc, devoid of input from juvenile arcs of the Altaids. These sediments were interpreted as deposited in a retroarc foreland basin ascribed to subduction of the Palaeo-Asian Ocean. Crustal thickness estimated from whole-rock La/Yb yields an average value of 58 ± 11 km, which corresponds to a palaeoelevation of 3.8 ± 0.7 km. The results reveal the existence in North China of an orogenic plateau comparable to the Altiplano of the Andes that blocked moisture transport from the ocean and served as an important orographic barrier to trigger Permian aridification.