New (U-Th-Sm)/He low-temperature apatite and zircon thermochronology ages reveal episodic Tertiary exhumation and uplift of the Central Taurides, southern Turkey

We performed (U-Th-Sm)/He apatite and zircon thermochronology (AHe and ZHe, respectively) on basement rocks from the Central Taurides, southern Turkiye to constrain its Tertiary >2000m surface uplift history. The samples were collected from the Alanya and Antalya units exposing in the southern part of the Central Taurides. The Alanya Massif represent a Late Cretaceous HP/LT eclogite to blueschist facies metamorphic pile whereas the Antalya Unit shows a relatively coherent stratigraphy consisting mainly of Triassic sandstones together with Permian and Jurassic limestones that are exposed as tectonic windows below the Alanya Massif. The AHe ages from the Alanya Massif cluster in with Early Oligocene (ca. 30 Ma), Early Miocene (ca. 20 Ma) and Late Miocene (ca. 8 Ma) ages. Apatites from one of the sandstone samples from the Antalya Unit gave also a Late Miocene age (ca. 9 Ma), consistent with the cooling ages of the tectonically overlying metamorphic rocks. In contrast, apatites from a sandstone sample exposed in the north show old, dispersed ages suggesting that they escaped from tectonic burial during the Eocene nappe stacking. ZHe ages from one of the metamorphic samples gave a ca. 30 Ma age; indistinguishable from its apatite ages. Our new AHe and ZHe age data indicate that, during Late Eocene nappe tectonics, the Alanya Massif and the underlying Antalya Unit was buried enough to reset the AHe and ZHe ages. Following the compressional regime, during the Early Oligocene, the Alanya Massif was subjected to a fast exhumation, possibly through an extensional detachment. This post-contractile-tectonic exhumation continued episodically during the Early Miocene until just prior to the Miocene transgression. The final Late Miocene exhumation ages are noteworthy and overlaps well with the beginning of the surface uplift of the southern margin of the Anatolian plateau. The new thermochronological data from the Central Taurides suggest that the extension of the southern margin of the Anatolian Plateau had already started in the Early Oligocene, predating the Arabia-Anatolia collision. The extension could have been triggered by the roll-back of the until then intact Bitlis-Cyprus-Hellenic slab, which created a widespread Oligo-Miocene extensional regime on the overriding Anatolian margin.