One hundred years ago, in 1919, the British geologist Edward Greenly coined the term “mélange”, abbreviation of “autoclastic mélange”, in describing a tectonically disrupted and internally strained phyllite-sandstone succession in the Mona Complex (Gwna Group) in Anglesey, north Wales (Greenly, 1919). Since this first definition, and after Hsü (1974), the term “mélange” has been extensively used to describe the occurrence of chaotic rock assemblages in orogenic belts and ancient subduction-accretion complexes, and later extended to other geodynamic environments such as collisional and intra-continental tectonic settings, including rifting and passive margin evolution, and strike-slip tectonic settings. This Special Issue of Gondwana Research, which is published to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the inception of the term “mélange” and concept in the geological literature (Greenly, 1919), is aimed at exploring and documenting such open problems and further ways of research revolving around mélanges, at various scales and in different tectonic settings and ages, through multi-disciplinary case studies from around the world.
