Tethys Ocean

The Tethys, also Tethys Ocean, Tethyssee or to distinguish it from the Palaeotethys also known as Neotethys, in Earth's history was an ocean that existed mainly in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic older. She disappeared for the most part, as Africa and India collided with Eurasia. Remnants of the seabed of the Tethys can be found north-west of Australia, in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Naming

Location

The Tethys was, like its predecessor, the Palaeotethys, an ocean in a huge bay in the east of the supercontinent Pangaea. Their edges formed the present continents Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia, with India not a part of Asia was, but there was on the southern edge of the Tethys. This ocean along the continental margin had extensive flat marginal seas ( shelves ), especially in Europe.

Formation and development

The emergence of the Tethys (or Neotethys ) from the Paläotethys was due to the migration of the so-called Cimmerian terranes from the North Rim to the South Rim of the Südostpangäa Nordostpangäa. During this walk, which began in the Permian, opened at the rear ( south ) of the Terra chain of Tethysozean while the Paläotethys was noticeably narrower by subduction at the southern edge of the Nordostpangäa. After the collision of the Cimmerian terranes with Nordostpangäa at the Triassic - Jurassic turn of the formation of the Tethys was completed.

With the breakup of Pangaea into Laurasia and Gondwana during the Jurassic Period ( about 200-150 million years ago), the Tethys expanded westward, and had previously been found where shallow water or even mainland, now arisen deep-sea basins. During the Cretaceous and Tertiary, the Tethys closed between residues Gondwana - Africa and India - which drifted counter-clockwise to the northeast, and Eurasia that drove clockwise to the south and southwest. By the collision of Africa and India with Eurasia alpidic chains emerged.

Because both the part of Pangaea, the Africa is today, as well as the part of Europe today is significantly further south were as Africa and Europe today and the average world temperature was higher, there was in the area of ​​Tethys a predominantly tropical, in the European area in any case subtropical climate with coral reefs and an enormous variety of other marine animals.

Importance

Due to the fact that many shelf regions of the continents, which surrounded the Tethys, were included later in the formation of mountains, the sediments of these shelves are today in many young fold mountains in Europe and southern Asia. This makes them easily accessible to geologists and paleontologists and can give, inter alia, information about life in the time of their deposition.

So you can understand the onset after the mass extinction at the end of the Permian development of new forms of life well primary to tertiary in these sediments due to the lifespan of the Tethys from Perm. Also observed at the end of the Cretaceous mass extinction is documented in Tethyssedimenten.