The Mississippian in the Central and Eastern Taurides (Turkey): constraints on the tectonic setting of the Tauride-Anatolide Platform

Data from the Mississippian tectono-stratigraphic units in the Tauride-Anatolide Platform, Central and Eastern Taurides, reveal that this region underwent incipient back-arc extension during the Variscan orogeny, but that rifting failed, leaving a basin floored with highly extended continental crust. The stratigraphy of several tectono-stratigraphic units, the Geyik Dagi, Aladag, and Bolkar Dagi Units were studied in detail in the Sultan Dagi and Hadim areas in the Central and Eastern Taurides. In the Sultan Dag area, the Geyik Dagi Unit contains shelf-type (shallow) marine clastics and carbonates of the Middle-Upper Mississippian Gokdere Member of the Harlak Formation, overlain by shales and basic volcanic/volcaniclastic rocks of the Kuz Member of the formation. The Mississippian age rocks in the Aladag Unit around Hadim are characterized by quartzarenites and carbonates of coastal to shallow shelf environment. The Bolkar Dagi Unit in the Hadim area includes inner shelf-type recrystallized limestones, dolomites and oolitic limestones. To the north of Konya, however, Middle Mississippian formations of the Bolkar Dagi Unit include metamorphosed olistostromal deposits with Silurian-Upper Devonian olistoliths, which were generated in an extensional basin with back-arc type bimodal volcanism. In the Cataloturan Nappe of the Bolkar Dagi Unit, in the Eastern Taurides, the Mississippian is represented by a basin/slope-toetype succession with an alternation of lithic tuffs, radiolarian cherts and pelagic limestones. It grades into Upper Mississippian shallow-marine carbonates. The data presented suggest the presence of a north-facing system with slope (Cataloturan) aborted rift basin (Konya-Bolkar Dagi) inner shelf (Hadim-Bolkar Dagi) coastal shelf (Hadim-Aladag) and shallow-shelf (Sultan Dagi-Geyik Dagi) along the northern margin of the Tauride-Anatolide Platform during the Mississippian