""\\"According to the literature, the Adana Basin, at the easternmost part of the Mediterranean. Basin in southern Turkey, records the Pliocene stage with shallow-marine to fluvial deposits.. Our micropalaeontological analysis of samples from the Adana Basin reveal Late Lago–Mare. biofacies with Paratethyan ostracod assemblages pertaining to the Loxocorniculina djafarovi. zone. Grey clays rich in planktonic foraminifera lie above the Lago–Mare deposits. Within the. grey clays, the continuous occurrence of the calcareous nannofossil Reticulofenestra zancleana. and the base of the Reticulofenestra pseudoumbilicus paracme points to an Early Zanclean age. (5.332–5.199 Ma). Both ostracod and benthic foraminifera indicate epibathyal and bathyal. environments. 87Sr\\\\\\\/86Sr measurements on planktonic and benthic foraminifera fall below the. mean global ocean value for the Early Zanclean, indicating potentially insufficient mixing of. low 87Sr\\\\\\\/86Sr Mediterranean brackish ‘Lago–Mare’ water with the global ocean in the earliest. Pliocene. We utilize the ages and palaeodepths of the marine sediments together with their modern. elevations to determine uplift rates of the Adana Basin of 0.06 to 0.13 mm a21 since 5.2–5.3 Ma. (total uplift of 350–650 m) from surface data, and 0.02–0.13 mm a21 since c. 1.8 Ma (total uplift. of 30–230 m) from subsurface data.. Supplementary material: Microphotographs of foraminifers, ostracods, and calcareous nannofossils,. plots of the calcareous nannofossil frequencies, occurrence of foraminifers and ostracods in. the study sections, results of Sr isotopic analysis, and a complete list of fossils are available at. www.geolsoc.org.uk\\\\\\\/SUP18535.\\""

At the southern margin of the Central Anatolian Plateau (CAP), marine deposits that overlie the Central Tauride units at up to 2 km of elevation were used to constrain the onset of uplift to the middle‐late Miocene. This study demonstrates that much younger marine deposits cap the southern margin. We recognize the Last Common Occurrence of Neogloboquadrina spp. (sin) (0.61 Ma) and Pseudoemiliania lacunosa (0.467 Ma), which points to an early middle Pleistocene age. The benthic fauna indicates an epibathyal marine environment (400 to 500 m paleodepth), with an associated paleocoastline now at ~1,500 to 1,600 m above sea level. Our new results imply uplift rates of up to 3.21–3.42 mm/yr for the CAP southern margin since the deposition of the young marine units. In the area, the evaluation of late Pleistocene and Holocene uplift rates of ~1 mm/yr points to a post early middle Pleistocene short‐lived period of rapid uplift of the CAP southern margin, which can correlate the short‐lived surface uplift signal in numerical models of slab breakoff. Overall, this work demonstrates that the majority of the modern topography at the CAP southern margin (1,500 to 1,600 m) was only recently acquired, pointing to the absence of a significant orographic barrier along the southern plateau margin prior to 500 ka. The multiphased uplift recognized at the CAP southern margin by previous authors, as well as the fast uplift rate documented in this work, can be linked to lithosphere delamination and subsequent slab breakoff during the Arabian‐Anatolian continental collision.

The Adana Basin of southern Turkey, located at the SE margin of the Central Anatolian Plateau in the vicinity of the Arabia-Eurasia collision zone, is ideally suited to record Neogene and Quaternary topographic and tectonic changes in the easternmost Mediterranean realm. On the basis of our correlation of 34 seismic reflection profiles with corresponding exposed units along the margins of the Adana Basin, we identify and characterize the seismic facies that corresponds to the upper part of the Messinian Handere Formation (ca. 5.45 to 5.33 Ma), which consists mainly of fluvial conglomerates and marls. The seismic reflection profiles indicate that ca. 1100 km 3 of the Handere Formation upper sub-unit is distributed over ca. 3000 km 2 , reflecting local sedimentation rates of up to 12.5 mm year À1 . This indicates a major increase in both sediment supply and subsidence rates at ca. 5.45 Ma. Our provenance analysis of the Handere Formation upper sub-unit based on clast counting and palaeocurrent measurements reveals that most of the sediment is derived from the Taurus Mountains at the SE margin of the Central Anatolian Plateau and regions farther north. A comparison of these results with the composition of recent fluvial conglomerates and the present-day drainage basins indicates major changes between late Messinian and present-day source areas. We suggest that these changes in drainage patterns and lithological characteristics result from uplift and ensuing erosion of the SE margin of the plateau. We interpret the tectonic evolution of the southern flank of the Anatolian Plateau and the coeval subsidence and sedimentation in the Adana Basin to be related to deep lithospheric processes, particularly lithospheric delamination and slab break-off.