Kazakhstania, also known as the Kazakhstan Block, is a small continental region in the interior of Asia. It consists of that area north and east of the Aral Sea, south of the Siberian craton and west of the Altai Mountains and Lake Balkhash. Politically, it comprises most of Kazakhstan and has a total area of around 1.3 million km². The Junggar basin in Xinjiang, China is also part of Kazahstania, though sometimes referred to as the Junggar Block.

It is believed that present-day Kazakhstania is chiefly a collage of early Paleozoic volcanic island arcs and possibly some very small continents. These were joined together during the Ordovician to form what was at the time an isolated continent of its own. During the Carboniferous and Permian, Siberia collided with Kazakhstania to form the Altai Mountains, whilst laster Baltica collided in the Ural orogeny, creating the basis for most of present-day Eurasia.

Kazakhstania is mainly flat: only in the east near Karaganda are there mountains and these only rise to 1,565 metres (5,130 feet) in the Tarbagatay Range. Although most of Kazakhstania is arid and practically no water flows from the region to the oceans, there is extensive grazing of cattle, sheep and camels on the grasslands which cover most of the region today. Because Kazakhstania was too dry for glaciation during the Quaternary, it remains very rich in metallic minerals. Kazakhstania contains as much as a quarter of the world's proven uranium reserves and is also one of the world's major source of lead, zinc, and antimony ores. On the southern boundary in the Turan Depression are large deposits of natural gas formed as a result of its collision with the Indian tectonic plate.

External links

• Map of the Kazakhstan Block and surrounding areas
• Ordovician-Permian paleogeography of Central Eurasia

Historical continents | Paleozoic | Geography of Kazakhstan | Geography of China