辛梅利亚大陆

title: Iranian microcontinent.
content: In 1974, after extensive field work in the Middle East, Swiss geologist Jovan Stöcklin identified the northern foot of the Alborz Range in northern Iran as the suture which in the Paleozoic was the northern shore of Gondwana and the remains of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean. Stöcklin also noted that an early Mesozoic or late Paleozoic rift separated the Iranian Plate from the Arabian Plate, and that another southern suture must be the remains of the Neo-Tethys Ocean. The opening of this later ocean, Stöcklin realized, must have transformed Iran into a microcontinent. Those observations made Stöcklin the first to identify a small part of what would later be known as Cimmeria.
title: Tectonic history.
content: In the Late Paleozoic, when the Cimmerian blocks were still located on the northern margin of Gondwana, they were far away from any active margins and orogenic belts, but they had been affected by thermal subsidence since the Siluran opening of Paleo-Tethys. Carboniferous to Permian ophiolites along suture zones in Tibet and north-eastern Iran indicate that the active margin of Paleo-Tethys was located here. It was slab-pull forces in the Paleo-Tethys that detached Cimmeria from Gondwana and opened the Neo-Tethys. The mid-ocean ridge in the Paleo-Tethys subducted under Eurasia, as evidenced by Permian MORB (mid-ocean ridge basalt) in Iran. Slab roll-back in the Paleo-Tethys opened a series of back-arc basins along the Eurasian margin and resulted in the collapse of the Variscan cordillera. As the Paleo-Tethys subducted under the Eurasian southern margin, back-arc oceans formed from Austria to China. Some of these back-arcs closed during the Cimmerian orogeny (e.g. the Karakaya-Küre sequence of back-arc oceans in Turkey), others remained open (e.g. the Meliata-Maliac-Pindos back-arc oceans in the eastern Mediterranean) leading to the formation of younger back-arc oceans.
title: Turkey.
content: Turkey is an assemblage of continental blocks that during the Permian were part of the northern margin of Gondwana. During the Permian-Triassic, as the Paleo-Tethys subducted under this margin (in what is today northern Turkey) a marginal sea opened and quickly got filled with sediments (today the basement of the Sakarya Composite Terrane in the Pontides). During the Late Triassic the Neo-Tethys began opening behind Cimmeria when the Eastern Mediterranean and its two eastern branches opened into the Bitlis-Zagros ocean (the southern branch of the Neo-Tethys).  During Early Jurassic Cimmeria began to disintegrate behind the Paleo-Tethyan volcanic arc. This opened the northern branch in the Neo-Tethys — the Intra-Pontide, Izmh-Ankara, and the Inner Tauride oceans. The closure of the Paleo-Tethys in the Middle Jurassic reduced the Cimmerian archipelago in Anatolia. South of the Cimmerian blocks there were now two branches of the Neo-Tethys, a northern, larger and more complex, and a southern, more reduced; the Anatolide-Tauride continent separated them, the small Sakarya continent was located within the northern branch. The Apulian continent was connected to the Anatolide-Tauride continent.
title: Iran.
content: The subduction of western Neo-Tethys under Eurasia resulted in extensive magmatism in what is now northern Iran. In the Early Jurassic this magmatism had produced a slab pull force which contributed to the break-up of Pangea and the initial opening of the Atlantic. During the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous the subduction of the Neo-Tethys mid-ocean ridge contributed to the break-up of Gondwana, including the detachment of the Argo-Burma terrane from Australia. The Central-East Iranian Microcontinent (CEIM) sutured with Eurasia in the Late Triassic during the regional "Eocimmerian" orogenic event in northern Iran, but Iran is made of several continental blocks and the area must have seen a number of ocean closures in the Late Paleozoic and Early Mesozoic.
title: Lhasa.
content: The Lhasa terrane has been interpreted as part of Cimmeria and, if this is the case, must have rifted from Gondwana together with Sibumasu and Qiantang. The timing of Lhasa's northward drift is still controversial, however, and paleomagnetic data is extremely scarce. Sedimentological and stratigraphical evidence, for example, suggest that it separated from Gondwana in the Late Triassic when Qiantang was already being accreted to Eurasia. This proposed Late Triassic rifting of Lhasa has also been documented along the north-western shelf of Australia where the Western Burma and Woyla terranes eventually separated from Gondwana in the Late Jurassic.

Summary: 辛梅利亚大陆(Cimmeria)是个小型史前大陆,位于辛梅利亚板块,包含现今的土耳其、伊朗、阿富汗、西藏、中南半岛、马来亚等陆块。

Cimmeria (continent): Cimmeria was an ancient continent, or, rather, a string of microcontinents or terranes, that rifted from Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere and was accreted to Eurasia in the Northern Hemisphere. It consisted of parts of what is today Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Tibet, Shan–Thai, and Malay Peninsula. Cimmeria rifted from the Gondwanan shores of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean during the Carboniferous-earliest Permian and as the Neo-Tethys Ocean opened behind it, during the Permian, the Paleo-Tethys closed in front of it. Cimmeria rifted off Gondwana from east to west, from Australia to the eastern Mediterranean. It stretched across several latitudes and spanned a wide range of climatic zones.