Origin of the Yellow Sea: an insight
2016; Elsevier BV; Volume: 61; Issue: 14 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1007/s11434-016-1113-z
ISSN2095-9281
Autores Tópico(s)Geological formations and processes
Resumorecently show that the basement of the Chinese continental shelf (beneath East China Sea and South China Sea) is geologically unrelated to the continental lithosphere of eastern China, but is of exotic origin.This alien/exotic terrane of a sizeable mass with large compositional buoyancy (either an oceanic plateau or a micro continent) was transported along with the Pacific plate that spread in the course of NW direction and subducted beneath the eastern margin of the continental China in the Mesozoic.Collision of this buoyant and unsubductable alien terrane with the continental China jammed the trench and terminated the subduction at ~ 100 Ma.This conclusion comes from a detailed analysis of the distribution of Jurassic-Cretaceous granitoids (~ 190 Ma to ~ 90 Ma) throughout the entire eastern continental China in space and time.The termination of the granitoid magmatism at ~ 90 Ma signifies subduction cessation at this time or shortly beforehand, e.g. at ~ 100 Ma.The jammed trench is predicted to locate on the Chinese continental shelf in the vicinity of, and parallel to, the Southeast coastal line, whose curved arc-shape is actually inherited from the pre-100 Ma arcshaped trench.To locate this Mesozoic plate boundary to the north in the Yellow Sea region and beyond is not straightforward because of the more recent (< 30 Ma) tectonic re-organization associated with the opening of the Sea of Japan.The latest finding of the younger granitoids (as young as ~ 56 Ma) in the Russian Far East by Tang et al. [2], together with the presence of younger granitoids in South Korea and Southwest Japan (as young as 71 Ma) (Fig. 1a), presents us an impetus for addressing some unanswered questions of [1] and also offers insights into the tectonic evolution of the region, including the nature and origin of the Yellow Sea:
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