Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences The Geodynamic Evolution of Iran Robert J. Stern,1 Hadi Shafaii Moghadam,2 Mortaza Pirouz,1 and Walter Mooney3 1Department of Geosciences, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080, USA; email:
[email protected] 2School of Earth Sciences, Damghan University, Damghan 36716-41167, Iran 3Earthquake Science Center, US Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California 94025, USA Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 2021. 49:9–36 Keywords The Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences is plate tectonics, continental collision, subduction initiation, ophiolite, online at earth.annualreviews.org magmatic arc, earthquake https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-071620- 052109 Abstract Copyright © 2021 by Annual Reviews. Iran is a remarkable geoscientific laboratory where the full range of processes All rights reserved that form and modify the continental crust can be studied. Iran’s crustal nu- cleus formed as a magmatic arc above an S-dipping subduction zone on the northern margin of Gondwana 600–500 Ma. This nucleus rifted and drifted northtobeaccretedtoSWEurasia∼250 Ma. A new, N-dipping subduc- tion zone formed ∼100 Ma along ∼3,000 km of the SW Eurasian margin, including Iran’s southern flank; this is when most of Iran’s many ophiolites formed. Iran evolved as an extensional continental arc in Paleogene time Access provided by University of Texas - Dallas on 06/01/21. For personal use only. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 2021.49:9-36. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org (66–23 Ma) and began colliding with Arabia ∼25 Ma. Today, Iran is an ex- ample of a convergent plate margin in the early stages of continent-continent collision, with a waning magmatic arc behind (north of ) a large and grow- ing accretionary prism, the Zagros Fold-and-Thrust Belt.