Uppermost Cretaceous-Lower Tertiary Ulukışla Basin, south-central Turkey: sedimentary evolution of part of a unified basin complex within an evolving Neotethyan suture zone

The Ulukışla Basin is interpreted as the result of extension (or transtension) coupled with subsidence and basic volcanism. After post-volcanic subsidence, the basin was terminated by regional convergence, culminating in thrusting and folding in Late Eocene time. Comparisons of the Ulukışla Basin with the adjacent central Anatolian basins (e.g. Tuzgölü, Sivas and Şarkişla) support the view that these basins formed parts of a regional transtensional (to extensional) basin system. In our preferred hypothesis, the Ulukışla Basin developed during an intermediate stage of continental collision, after steady-state subduction of oceanic crust had more or less ended (“soft collision”), but before the opposing Tauride and Eurasian continental units forcefully collided (“hard collision”). Late Eocene forceful collision terminated the basinal evolution and initiated uplift of the Taurus Mountains.