Field Evidence for a Major Early Paleogene Folding Phase Across the Zagros Simple Folded Zone (Lurestan Province, Iran)

We report here the presence of fold growth strata in lower Paleogene beds across Lurestan. Those are associated with a compressional phase much older than the typical Zagros folding which affected the eastern side of the Simple folded zone 12 Ma ago (Emami, 2008) and spread to the mountain front, on the western edge of the Simple Folded Zone around 8 Ma ago (Homke et al., 2006) with the deposition of Agha Jari-Bakhtyari and Quaternary sediments. Early folding accounts there for up to half of the total shortening measured in cross section and corresponds to a shortening of around 10%.