Mélanges: 100th anniversary of the inception of the term and concept. Gondwana Research Special issue.

This Special Issue, which is published to celebrate a century of “mélange concept” in the geological literature (Greenly, 1919), is aimed at exploring and documenting open problems and further ways of research revolving around mélanges, at various scales and in different tectonic setting and ages, through multi-disciplinary case studies from around the world. The papers of this Special Issue present the most up-to-date observations and interpretations on various typeset classical mélanges, their forming processes, diagnostic criteria to differentiate among different types, and the related terminology. The majority of the papers in this Special Issue are based on the contributions presented at dedicated Mélange sessions that we have organized and convened at the GSA Meeting in Seattle, WA-USA in October 2017. The geographic locations of the case studies covered in this Special Issue are shown in Fig. 1. This Special Issue represents, therefore, a significant contribution to the contemporary literature on mélanges and related problems in their recognition, classification and understanding through the Earth history, providing also a modern and updated archive on well-documented mélange occurrences from different geodynamic environments.