It is now more than 100years since Suess advanced the concept of the Tethys Ocean in 1893. Since the 1960s when the theory of plate tectonics became established, the Tethys region has attracted the attention of many geologists because it has experienced a complex evolution involving numerous continental fragments drifting in several discrete stages from the Gondwanan margin in the Southern Hemisphere northward to amalgamate with Eurasia in the Northern Hemisphere. The subsequent orogenies associated with consecutive microplate collisions caused great changes to the regional topography and environments, which researchers now realize had global impacts on climate, biotic evolution, and biogeography.