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The Greater Caucasus is Europe's largest mountain belt. Significant uncertainties remain over the evolution of the range, largely due to a lack of primary field data. This work demonstrates that depositional systems within the Oligocene-Early Miocene Maykop Series on either side of the Western Greater Caucasus (WGC) display a similar provenance and divergent palaeocurrents away from the range, constraining a minimum age for the subaerial uplift of the range as early EarlyOligocene. An Eocene-Oligocene hiatus, basal Oligocene olistostromes and a marked increase in nannofossil reworking also point to initial deformation in the earliest Oligocene. The initial uplift of the WGC occurred during the final assembly of the Tethysides to its south. Uplift commenced after the Late Eocene final suturing of northern Neotethys and during the initial collision of Arabia with the southern accreted margin of Eurasia. This suggests that compressional deformation was rapidly transferred across the collision zone from the indenting Arabian plate to its northern margin.

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A B S T R A C T :Intrastratal solution of detrital heavy minerals in North Sea Tertiary sandstones takes place in two different diagenetic settings, deep burial and acidic weathering. These are characterized by different orders of mineral stability: apatite, chloritoid, garnet, sphene and spinel are less stable in acidic weathering than in deep burial, whereas the reverse is true for andalusite, kyanite and sillimanite. Heavy-mineral dissolution patterns, therefore, do not follow one single order of stability but several, depending on the diagenetic environment in which the dissolution occurs. It seems from this that the relative order of stability for detrital heavy minerals is controlled by the chemistry of the interstitial waters, whereas the limits of persistence depend on pore-fluid temperature, rate of water throughput, and geological age. Because different diagenetic environments lead to differing orders of mineral stability, it may prove possible to elucidate certain aspects of the diagenetic history of a sandstone by heavy-mineral dissolution patterns.

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