Abstract
: Tethys is believed to be a wide ocean which closed, reopened, and then closed again, and referred as Proto-Tethys, Paleo-Tethys, Neo-Tethys and Para-Tethys subducting some 5000 km of oceanic crust before disappearing completely. Tethys Ocean continued to expand dividing Pangaea into the two large continents of Laurasia in the north and Gondwana in the south, creating an oceanic extension, which today forms the Central Atlantic Ocean. Suess’s Tethys connecting eastern and southern Asia with Middle East and Europe through the Himalayas persisted from mid-Permian (250 Ma) and vanished in the Paleocene (50 Ma). It was an epicontinental Sea, transgressed and regressed frequently, covering northern India to southern Siberia and from the present Pacific coastal area to perhaps Italy, in its former position besides Spain. It apparently continued into the Appalachian geo-syncline and through it extended from eastern to western Panthalassa Sea –precursor to the modern Pacific Ocean. It was thus, a truly intra-Pangaea Sea. This paleontological, paleoclimate and Paleogeographic evidences do not support the existence of the Proto-Tethys, Paleo-Tethys and Neo-Tethys. Indeed, India was continuous with the rest of Asia, and therefore it could not have collided with it. The Himalaya is an inter-platform type of mountain range formed by vertical uplift and gravity gliding and not by continent-continent collision as believed today. Rejection of a vast Tethyan Ocean, the apparent small size of an Arctic Ocean and the questionable validity of vast Pacific Ocean lend support to concept of expanding Earth. Although, objections are raised against Earth expansion, but if there was no Tethyan Ocean, and if the Arctic Ocean was smaller than now, the Earth should have been deformed and smaller.

Keywords
Tethys, Expanding Earth, Himalaya

Cite this paper
Zahid A. Khan, Ram Chandra Tewari, The facts and fictions of the Oceanic Tethys concept , SCIREA Journal of Geosciences. Volume 1, Issue 1, October 2016 | PP. 12-41.

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