Apatite fission track data from central Anatolian granitoids (Turkey): Constraints on Neo‐Tethyan closure

Apatite fission track age versus elevation profiles and temperature‐time‐path modeling indicate an early to middle Paleocene (57–62 Ma) rapid exhumation of the Middle to Late Cretaceous granitoids in central Anatolia and an Oligocene (28–30 Ma) rapid exhumation of the Eocene Kösedağ batholith in the NE Sivas region, part of eastern central Pontides. The early to middle Paleocene rapid exhumation is thought to result from a regional compressional regime following the collision of the Eurasian Plate and the Tauride‐Anatolide Platform at the closure of the Izmir‐Ankara‐Erzincan branch of the northern Neo‐Tethys. The Oligocene accelerated exhumation of the Kösedağ batholith is contemporaneous with the Oligo‐Miocene closure of the southern Neo‐Tethys which juxtaposed the amalgamated Eurasian and Tauride‐Anatolide Platform and the African‐Arabian Plate along the Bitlis‐Zagros suture in southeast Anatolia. The compressional regime due to this collision affected a large area between the Greater Caucasus in the north and northern African‐Arabian Plate in the south.