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Kazakhstania (), the Kazakh terranes, or the Kazakhstan Block, is a geological region in which consists of the area roughly centered on , north and east of the , south of the Siberian craton and west of the . The in , , is also part of Kazakhstania, though sometimes referred to as the Junggar Block. Because the Kazakh terranes merged during the Late Ordovician as part of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt they are also referred to as the Kazakh Orogen. These terranes are located in what is today , north-eastern , northern and south-western . Today Kazakhstania is surrounded by three large, former continents: to the north-east the Gornostaev Shear Zone separates it from Siberia with which it collided during the ; to the north-west is which lay adjacent to the Kazakh terrane but far away from Kazakhstania; to the south and east was stretching from the South Pole to the Equator. Not far away from the dispersed Kazakh terranes were South China, North China, and , but how these continental blocks were positioned relative to Gondwana is not known.


Tectonic evolution
In the Early Palaeozoic the Kazakh were widely distributed north or northeast of the Mangyshlak, , and Tarim terranes. The location, origin, and faunal affinities of these terranes has, however, been the subject of two competing hypotheses: one described these terranes as an enormous called the Kipchak arc, the other as a series of more or less parallel belts. Faunal analyses indicate that some of the terranes probably originated in Gondwana rather than Baltica or Siberia. A 2006 analysis of indicated that the Chu-Ili Mountains must have formed an independent, Peri-Gondwanan terrane in the Late Ordovician located not far from the North and South China .

More recent studies suggest that in the Late Ordovician the Kazakh terranes formed an archipelago composed of clusters of island arcs and microcontinents centered on the Equator. Key units in this assemblage were the Boshchekul (in north Kazakhstan), Chingiz-Tarbagatai (east Kazakhstan), and Chu-Ilu (south Kazakhstan) terranes. The Atashu-Zhamshi microcontinent was located in the southwestern margin of the archipelago. A few terranes probably merged as early as the Middle Ordovician but Kazakhstania is very unlikely to have formed a single continent before the end of the period.; For a map of the Kazakh terranes see ; For a Late Ordovician reconstruction see

During the and , Siberia collided with Kazakhstania to form the , later collided in the , creating the basis for most of present-day .


Commercial importance
Kazakhstania is mainly flat: only in the east near are there mountains, and these only rise to 1,565 metres (5,130 feet) in the Tarbagatay Range. Although most of Kazakhstania is arid and practically no water flows from the region to the oceans, there is extensive grazing of , and on the grasslands which cover most of the region today. Kazakhstania was too dry for extensive during the . Kazakhstania contains as much as a quarter of the world's proven reserves and is also one of the world's major source of , , and ores. On the southern boundary in the are large deposits of .


See also

Notes

Sources


External links

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