Abstract This paper presents biostratigraphical and palaeogeographical correlations, in a post-Hercynian and pre-Cimmerian tectonic framework, between stratigraphic sections of Late Permian age in two important and remote areas, with some considerations concerning neighbouring countries. It concerns mainly the Nikitin sequence (Kuban, Russia) and the Bükk Mountains (Hungary), and describes the carbonate environments, microfauna diversity, foraminiferal assemblages, calcisponge and brachiopod constructions, and gymnocodiacean accumulations. This study is extended to former Transcaucasia (southern Armenia, Georgia and Adzerbadjan), the Alborz Belt in northern Iran, Italy and the Carnic Alps. It emphasizes a relatively simple biosedimentary evolution, which permits a confident palaeogeographic reconstruction. New geochemical results provided some additional markers, in particular small microspherules consisting of Cr/Ni spinels of cosmic origin. They occur in several sections in a defined position at the Permian–Triassic boundary based on biostratigraphic correlations (conodonts, foraminifers, last Permian reefal phenomena). These geochemical data might be related to a possible meteorite impact, Nevertheless, another global alternative phenomenon occurs. From the Latest Permian to the Earliest Triassic, the carbonate production or biomineralization is preferentially concentrated in the confined, intertidal or lagunal zones, and its evolution is relatively progressive from gymnocodiacean accumulations of the Latest Permian to the microbialites of the Earliest Triassic.

Abstract Low-temperature thermochronological data for the Eurasian foreland north of the Bitlis–Zagros suture zone suggest that the tectonic stresses related to the Arabian collision during mid-Miocene time were transmitted efficiently over large distances, focusing preferentially at rheological discontinuities. Since the late Middle Miocene a new tectonic regime has been active as the westwards translation of Anatolia is accommodating most of the Arabia–Eurasia convergence, thus precluding the efficient transfer of stress northwards. Apatite fission-track data from the central Lesser Caucasus show that a portion of this orogen underwent a discrete phase of cooling/exhumation at 18–12 Ma (late Early–early Middle Miocene) as a result of the structural reactivation of a segment of the Late Cretaceous–Palaeogene Sevan–Akera suture zone. This inference contradicts the notion that the post-collisional history of the study area was dominated by strike-slip tectonics with relatively minor dip-slip components. Reactivation and exhumation was focused along those segments of the suture zone at high angles to the inferred collisional stress field; the remaining areas were not exhumed enough to expose a new apatite partial annealing zone and thus retained the thermochronological record of a phase of Late Cretaceous cooling/exhumation associated with ophiolite obduction and the following continental collision along the suture zone.