Lithostratigraphic and biostratigraphic revision of the Hawasina Nappes in the eastern and central Oman Mountains, including the redefinition of the Hamrat Duru Group and the definition of the three new groups, the A1

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The platform unit of the Oman Mountains is composed of shelf sedimentary and volcanic rocks, ranging in age from late Proterozoic to late Turonian-Coniacian, that were deformed mainly during the polyphase Eo-Alpine tectogenesis. In the late Turonian-Coniacian tangential shearing deformation with NE (oceanward) vergence occurred under HP/LT conditions of regional metamorphism. This tectonic phase was largely responsible for the structural and metamorphic zonation of the platform unit. A SW-NE gradient from external to internal zones has been recognized from the south flank of Jabal Akhdar, where fracture cleavage appears, to the eastern part of Saih Hatat, where schistose glaucophane ecologites are preserved. This tectonometamorphic event was related to partial subduction of the northeast corner of the Arabian platform beneath the neo-Tethyan oceanic lithosphere. A later phase of higher-level shearing deformation with SW (continentward) vergence, during the Campanian, accompanied the thrusting of the Hawasina Nappes and the obduction of the Semail Ophiolite. These tectonic units were transported SSW respectively from the Permian-Cretaceous cover of the Arabian continental margin and from the oceanic floor of the Semail marginal basin that opened during the Albian-Cenomanian. Tectonic slicing and strike-slip faulting within the platform unit, on the northern margins of Jabal Akhdar and Saih Hatat, formed frontal and lateral ramps during the advance of the nappes onto the Arabian Platform. During a third phase of deformation, probably during the Campanian-Maastrichtian, large-amplitude, long-wavelength, open, near-upright folding accompanied by poorly developed, subvertical, SSW-NNE fracture cleavage indicates moderate shortening during uplift perpendicular to the earlier structures. The resulting Eo-Alpine foreland belt of the Oman Mountains was partly covered by marine carbonate deposits during the middle Maastrichtian to late Maastrichtian or early Palaeogene before being affected by Alpine tectonics during the Miocene.

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The northeast edge of the Arabian Platform in the Oman Mountains is represented by the autochthonous unit that crops out in the two windows of Jabal Akhdar and Saih Hatat, beneath and in front of the Hawasina and Samail nappes.The Eo-Alpine orogenic cycle began in the Late Permian with extension on the margin of Gondwana and ended in the Campanian with the formation of a subduction-obductiontype mountain range, the Oman Mountains of the Late Cretaceous. During this cycle, long periods of stable shelf sedimentation were interrupted by tensional tectonic episodes, often accompanied by volcanism and subsidence of the platform, passing into the bathyal domain.Deposition during the Permian to Campanian occurred during five main sedimentary cycles. In the Late Permian (Murghabian), a widespread marine transgression covered the edge of Gondwana in a tensional setting. The 'Fusulinid Sea' transgression was followed by the deposition, lasting until the Triassic, of a thick regressive sequence, the Akhdar Group, which was terminated by emergence and weathering in a continental environment. The next sedimentary cycle, represented by the Sahtan Group, began in the Pliensbachian, when the Oman Mountains area formed an inner carbonate shelf, and ended in the early Tithonian. The entire margin of the platform was profoundly affected, in the late Tithonian, by extension, listric faulting and foundering into the bathyal domain, with deposition of the Kahmah Group (Maiolica-type deposits: calpionellid-bearing micrite), and rapid retreat of the continental slope by about 250 km. Renewed carbonate shelf deposition then prograded SSW-NNE across the foundered part, though this was still incomplete when the latest Aptian-Albian transgression took place. At the Cenomanian-Turonian boundary, the shelf underwent profound reorganization with the development of the Muff (intrashelf) Basin, in which the Aruma Group was deposited, and the Masqat-Musandam High which provided the detritus filling the Muti Basin on the continentward side and the Hawasina Basin on the oceanic side. Fragments from the advancing nappe were redeposited in the Muti Basin only from the Campanian on, and it was only during this period that a flysch trough became superimposed on part of the Muti Basin. The closure of the Muti Basin was affected with the emplacement of the nappes on the platform and the subsequent deposition of cover formations over both nappes and the autochthon from the late Maastrichtian onward.