LAUSR

Many studies have been undertaken on the structure, origin and geodynamic evolution of the Zagros region and the Arabian Platform Passive Margin (Alavi, 1980, 1994, 2004, 2007; Agard et al. 2005; Ali et al., 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2019, Al Qayim et al. 2012, Lawa et al. 2013; Omar et al. 2015; Mohammad and Cornell 2017; Lawa 2018). Karim (2020) provided an outcomes in his definition of the paleogeography and tectonic setting of Early Cretaceous Arabian Passive Continental Margin. The same thing is true for the Neo-Tethys basin plain and the present Zagros Orogenic Belt. However, Karim (2020) based his findings on the local occurrence of a calciturbidites facies (50 km) within the Balambo Formation-Qamchuqa transitional lateral boundary, thus refining the depositional model along the Arabian Platform and deep basin of Neo-Tethyan sea during the Early Cretaceous in Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Balambo Formation was described for the first time by Wetzel (1947) in Van Bellen et al. (1959) from the Sirwan valley, Halabja area, Kurdistan region, where it is about 762 m thick and of Valanginian–Turonian age. The upper division of 503 m consists of thin-bedded globigerinal limestone, passing downwards into radiolarian limestone, that are grey, weathering white, forming smooth weathered slopes without marked features. The lower division of 259 m comprises thin-bedded, blue ammonitiferous limestone with intercalations of olive green marl and dark blue shale. Henson (1950) illustrated and described the passage from massive, dolomitized Qamchuqa Formation, through Sarmord Formation tongues, into the smooth-weathering Balambo Formation which is spectacularly exposed in the southwestern scarp-face of Pera-Magron, near Sulaimaniyah. All the sedimentological, stratigraphical and paleontological studies about the Balambo Formation since 1950 provide no indication of debrites or calciturbidites facies (Buday 1980; Ghafor 1993; Rodicic 1995; Abwai and Hammaoudi 2008; Maala 2008; Daoud et al. 2010; Al-Khafaf 2014; Algburi and Sagular 2018; Al-Khafaf and Al-Mutwali 2018); all these studies considered this formation to represent a deep marine facies. More than that, Karim and Taha (2009), Karim et al. (2013) and Karim (2016) do not mentioned any calciturbites or debrites facies from the Balambo Formation in the type section, Azmer Mountain, and at its lateral changes to the Qamchuqa Formation. Ameen (2008) and Karim and Ameen (2009) did not record any calciturbidite or debrite facies from the Qmachuqa Formation in the Pera-Magron anticline. Ameen and Gharib (2013) did not recognise any calciturbidtes or debrites from the type section of the Qamchuqa Formation. Karim (2020) studied only two incomplete sections (Figs. 2 and 3), that is section X1 from Pera-Magron mountain (Piskani) and section X2 from the Azmer Mountain, using only 25 samples and 5 thin sections, with a few scattered outcrop figures, of the Early Cretaceous sequence, which is about 1350 m in thickness (Fig. 2). Without scale, also they recorded an eastern longitude 46° 44′ 22′′. This location is outside Kurdistan and Iraq, and within Iran territories. In his stratigraphic column (Fig. 3), Karim (2020) changed the original lithology (limestone, dolostone and marly limestone) and true thickness (600 m) of the Qamchuqa Formation to what he nominated as a debrites facies (450 m thick) * Yousif O. Mohammad [email protected]