The prominent morphological features in central Asia are the mountain ranges of the Pamir, Tian Shan, and the Himalaya-Tibetan orogen. The present-day morphology is the result of uplift related to the Cenozoic India-Asia collision. However, this is built upon a long-lasting and complex pre-Cenozoic history of ocean closures (Proto- and Paleo-Tethys, Paleo-Asian), accretion of terranes and related reorganization of Asia´s southern margin. This long-lasting history of consecutive accretionary events left behind a complex mosaic of high- and low-strain domains, allochthonous blocks (terranes) and intervening suture zones. A significant challenge is to correlate and date those domains, which are often used as large scale structural markers for e.g. the Cenozoic indentation of the Pamirs. Both the pre-Cenozoic history and the timing and kinematics of young deformation have to be well-constrained in order to reconstruct the pre-Cenozoic configuration and understand how it conditioned Asia´s response to India´s collision.

As all the above mentioned mountain ranges record stages in the pre-Cenozoic evolution of Asia´s southern margin, it is necessary to compare and correlate these evolutionary stages in time and space. Therefore we invite contributions from geoscientists who are working on various aspects of the geologic evolution of Central Asia, including structural geology, geochemistry and sedimentology as well as geophysical or modeling studies.