Tethyan Trench Tethyan Trench The Tethyan Trench was an ancient oceanic trench that existed in the northern part of the Tethys Ocean during the middle Mesozoic to early Cenozoic eras. The Tethyan Trench formed when the Cimmerian Plate was subducting under eastern Laurasia, around 200 million years ago, in the Early Jurassic. The Tethyan Trench extended at its greatest during Late Cretaceous to Paleocene, from what is now Greece to the Western Pacific Ocean. Subduction at the Tethyan Trench probably caused the continents Africa and India to move towards Eurasia, which resulted in the opening of the Indian Ocean. When the Arabian
Oceanic trench to dispose of sediment. An evolution in trench morphology can be expected, as oceans close and continents converge. While the ocean is wide, the trench may be far from continental sources of sediment and so may be deep. As continents approach each other, the trench can fill with continental sediments and become shallower. A simple way to approximate when the transition from subduction to collision has occurred is when the plate boundary previously marked by a trench is filled enough to rise above sea level. Accretionary prisms grow in two ways: by frontal accretion, whereby sediments are scraped off the