“…The apparent Cambrian-Ordovician palaeogeographic proximity of the Zagros, Sanandaj-Sirjan, central Iranian and Alborz basins (e.g., Torsvik and Cocks, 2017;Domeier, 2018) and the strong biogeographic links of the Alborz Mountains with South China and the Mediterranean margin of Gondwana (Álvaro et al, 2013) have been, and still are, a continuing matter of discussion. Provenance analysis by Horton et al (2008) and Shakerardakani et al (2021), based on detrital zircon populations from Cambrian sandstones sampled in these tectonostratigraphic units, has yielded similar age peaks at 550, 600 and 950 Ma, including minor peaks at 780 and 860 Ma, and subsidiary peaks at 1020, 1880 and 2500 Ma. These U-Pb ages match detrital zircon results for Ediacaran-Cambrian sandstones of Israel, Jordan and possibly Egypt (Kröner et al, 1990;Wilde and Youssef, 2002;Avigad et al, 2003;Kolodner et al, 2006;Meinhold et al, 2021), reflecting common sediment sources from the Arabian-Nubian Shield of the western Arabian Peninsula and Northeast Africa.…”