Lower Palaeozoic stratigraphy in the southern and central Amanos Mountains, south central Turkey

Abstract
Formations of Cambrian and Ordovician age originally identified by the letters A to E in the southern Amanos Mountains are reviewed using lithostratigraphic units known from the western Taurus Mountains and south-eastern Turkey. The youngest Cambrian rocks in the southern Amanos belong to the Sosink Formation and their age, based on trilobite evidence, ranges from the Badulesia Zone to the Solenopleuropsis Zone of the Middle Cambrian; they are overlain unconformably by conglomerates dated as Triassic? by means of plant fossils. Ordovician rocks – Seydişehir Formation (approx. Arenig) and Bedinan Formation (Caradoc in part) – are exposed further north, in the central Amanos. The unusual position of the allochthonous ophiolites, which rest in part directly upon Lower Palaeozoic rocks, is discussed.