Unraveling the early-middle Paleozoic paleogeography of Kazakhstan on the basis of Ordovician and Devonian paleomagnetic results

It is a common concept that different tectonic units in the western part of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt were united into the landmass of the Kazakhstania continent in the Paleozoic but many important details of its history remain enigmatic and controversial. Recently published paleomagnetic data from this region demonstrate that the similar to 2000 km long horseshoe-shaped Devonian Volcanic Belt was created by oroclinal bending of an originally rectilinear active margin of Kazakhstania. Still, the Silurian and Devonian paleomagnetic results which this interpretation is based upon are limited and unevenly spread along the belt, and additional middle Paleozoic data are highly desirable. Accordingly, we studied three mid-Paleozoic objects from different segments of this volcanic belt. Two of the three new objects yielded paleomagnetic directions that fit perfectly into the oroclinal scenario, whereas the third one provided no interpretable data. The earlier history of Kazakhstania, however, remains misty. We obtained three new Ordovician results in north-central Kazakhstan and found similar inclinations but widely dissimilar declinations. Previously published data show a large scatter of Ordovician declinations in South Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as well. We analyzed all seven Middle-Late Ordovician paleolatitudes and came to the conclusion that a nearly E-W trending active margin of the Kazakhstania landmass had existed at low (similar to 10 degrees S) latitudes at that time. We hypothesize that this margin of the Kazakhstania landmass collided with another island arc, called Baydaulet-Akbastau, and with the Aktau-Junggar microcontinent by the Ordovician-Silurian boundary. As a result of this collision, subduction ceased, and regional deformation, magmatism, and rotations of crustal fragments took place in most of Kazakhstania. In Silurian time, Kazakhstania moved northward crossing the equator and rotating clockwise by similar to 45 degrees. This changed the orientation of the Kazakhstania to NW-SE, and thereby established the (rectilinear) predecessor of the modern curved Devonian Volcanic Belt. (C) 2012 International Association for Gondwana Research. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.