| The town of Nigde is in the foreground, with a view of the northern margin of the Nigde massif in the background. The photo was taken from the castle in the center of town. |
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Field work in the Nigde massif is excellent because you get to look at mountains like this, just across the valley (east) from the massif, but you don't have to climb them. |
| Interlayered marble (white rock on hillside), calc-silicate, and metapelite (darker layers on hillside) are spectacularly exposed in the Nigde massif |
| Andalusite (large pink-red crystals) in quartz vein, eastern Nigde massif. Field of view = 6 cm. The veins are synkinematic with respect to extensional shear (detachment) and record the late-stages of Miocene exhumation of the core complex. |
| Photomicrograph of the andalusite in the above photo. Grains are zoned, with dark-pink/red Fe-richer cores (0.5-0.6 wt% Fe2O3) and lighter pink Fe-poor rims (< 0.3 wt% Fe2O3). Minor amounts of Mn are present, but there is no detectable Ti, Cr, or other trace elements. Field of view = 4.5 mm. |
| DLW on top of the Nigde massif, 1997, standing on metaperidotite infolded with marble and quartzite. View east across the Ecemis fault valley to the Aladaglar (Allah Mountains), Alpine carbonate nappes and ophiolite klippen. The Ecemis fault is an active strike-slip fault but had an earlier Alpine history involving uplift of the core complex. |
| Another view of the Ala Dag (Nigde massif in foreground). Some of the snow-capped peaks are over 3700 meters high. |
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View of the southern end of the Nigde massif (detachment fault of the Nigde core complex). The white rock on the right side of the photograph is marble. The darker rock on the left side of the photograph (left of the stream valley) is Ulukisla basin sedimentary rock (sandstone, conglomerate, carbonate rocks). View is towards the west. |
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The southern margin of the Nigde massif is a low angle normal fault zone (see photo above). This photograph shows a polished fault surface, dipping south at the southern margin. The upper surface of the fault zone is intensely ductilely deformed (in places mylonitic), with intensity of deformation decreasing away from the fault. The ductile shear zones are accompanied by brittle faults which formed during the progressive exhumation of the metamorphic rocks of the lower plate. |
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The lower plate marbles have been folded during early compression related to Late Cretaceous collision, burial, and metamorphism. These rocks are calc-silicate gneisses of the Asigedigi Formation, southern Nigde massif. |
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The core complex model for exhumation of the Nigde massif (Whitney & Dilek, 1997; structural mapping) and final cooling in the Miocene (Fayon et al., 2001; apatite fission-track data) have been questioned, but local regions of earlier (pre-Early Eocene) unroofing of the massif have been subsequently deformed and metamorphosed. Shown here in a photograph of the SE corner of the Nigde massif are metaconglomerates located near the pre-Eocene unconformity of Gautier & Bozkurt (2001; EUG abstract): note the isoclinal folds. The conglomerates above the unconformity are metamorphosed and intensely deformed (folded, foliated), and the unconformity is also a fault zone (chracterized by cataclasite in the basement rocks). Colored dashed lines approximately outline the folds in the metaconglomerate. |