The widely distributed Cenozoic paleomagnetic inclination anomaly in Asia is usually attributed to either a widespread error of magnetic field recording due to an inclination flattening mechanism in sediments, or to the persistence of an anomalous non-dipolar component of the geomagnetic field throughout the Tertiary. Based on an analysis of the Asian paleomagnetic database for Meso-Cenozoic times, we suggest that instead this puzzling anomaly results from an overlooked global plate tectonics cause where the wide so-called Eurasian plate would have suffered from previously undetected transpressive north–south relative movements between its western and eastern ends since the Cretaceous. These relative movements are most probably accommodated by a component of right-lateral shear movement distributed in the Tornquist–Tesseyre zone, and a localized left-lateral shear movement in the Ural Mountain chain during the Tertiary. Therefore, Eurasia was not the single rigid plate that Cenozoic plate reconstructions have accepted.