Cimmerian Orogeny Cimmerian Orogeny The Cimmerian Orogeny was an orogeny that created mountain ranges that now lie in Central Asia. The orogeny is believed to have begun 200–150 million years ago (much of the Jurassic Period), when the Cimmerian plate collided with the southern coast of Kazakhstania and North and South China, closing the ancient Paleo-Tethys Ocean between them. The plate consisted of what are now known as Turkey, Iran, Tibet and western Southeast Asia. Much of the plate's northern boundary formed mountain ranges that were as high as the present-day Himalayas. The orogeny continued well into the Cretaceous and Early Cenozoic.
Andean orogeny were inverted in the Miocene. After a period of quiescence the Agrio fold and thrust belt resumed limited activity in the Eocene and then again in the Late Miocene. In the south of Mendoza Province the Guañacos fold and thrust belt (36.5° S) appeared and grew in the Pliocene and Pleistocene consuming the western fringes of the Neuquén Basin. The early development of the Andean orogeny in southernmost South America affected also the Antarctic Peninsula. In southern Patagonia at the onset of the Andean orogeny in the Jurassic, extensional tectonics created the Rocas Verdes Basin, a back-arc basin whose southeastern