Journal
TECTONOPHYSICS
Volume 581, Issue -, Pages 76-83Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
DOI: 10.1016/j.tecto.2012.01.011
Keywords
Brittle tectonics; Continental deformation; Palaeostress; Zagros Mountains
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Funding
- Cultural Service of the French Embassy in Tehran
- Geological Survey of Iran
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The present-day Zagros fold-and-thrust belt of SW-Iran corresponds to the former Arabian passive continental margin of the southern Neo-Tethyan basin since the Permian-Triassic rifting, undergoing later collisional deformation in mid-late Cenozoic times. In this paper an overview of brittle tectonics and palaeostress reconstructions of the Zagros fold-and-thrust belt is presented, based on direct stress tensor inversion of fault slip data. The results indicate that, during the Neo-Tethyan oceanic opening, an extensional tectonic regime affected the sedimentary cover in Triassic-Jurassic times with an approximately N-S trend of the sigma(3) axis, oblique to the margin, which was followed by some local changes to a NE-SW trend during Jurassic-Cretaceous times. The stress state significantly changed to thrust setting, with a NE-SW trend of the sigma(1) axis, and a compressional tectonic regime prevailed during the continental collision and folding of the sedimentary cover in Oligocene-Miocene times. This compression was then followed by a strike-slip stress state with an approximately N-S trend of the sigma(1) axis, oblique to the belt, during inversion of the inherited extensional basement structures in Pliocene-Recent times. The brittle tectonic reconstructions, therefore, highlighted major changes of the stress state in conjunction with transitions between thin- and thick-skinned structures during different extensional and compressional stages of continental deformation within the oblique divergent and convergent settings, respectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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