Metallogeny of the Tethyan Orogenic Belt: From Mesozoic Magmatic Arcs to Cenozoic Back-Arc and Postcollisional Settings in Southeast Europe, Anatolia, and the Lesser Caucasus: An Introduction

Abstract

Introduction The Tethyan mountain ranges stretch from northwestern Africa and western Europe to the southwest Pacific Ocean and constitute the longest continuous orogenic belt on Earth. It is an extremely fertile metallogenic belt, which includes a wide diversity of ore deposit types formed in very different geodynamic settings, which are the source of a wide range of commodities mined for the benefit of society (Janković, 1977, 1997; Richards, 2015, 2016). There are other ore deposit types in this segment of the Tethyan metallogenic belt that are not covered in this special issue, such as bauxite and Ni laterite deposits (Herrington et al., 2016), ophiolite-related chromite deposits (Çiftçi et al., 2019), sedimentary exhalative and Mississippi Valley-type deposits (Palinkaš et al., 2008; Hanilçi et al., 2019), or deposits related to surficial brine processes (Helvacı, 2019).