|
, Hong Kong
The subject of this Special Publication is one of the most interesting in global geoscience: the evolution of the tectonic collage that forms China. Many of the processes that shape the Earth’s lithosphere are best exemplified by the geology of this part of Asia, but, since geology has no national boundaries, the geological evolution of China cannot be appropriately discussed without reference to key features in adjacent areas. The geology of China provides outstanding opportunities to elucidate global processes, but there are some features that are unique to the region. Many have been the focus of recent attention and have attracted international research teams because of their world-wide significance.
Since 1980 it has become clear that the geology of China is a collection of crustal terranes juxtaposed along belts of major tectonic activity representing orogenic events of both Tethyan and circum-Pacific affinity (Fig. 1). This first became abundantly obvious through the 1985 Preliminary Tectonostratigraphic Terrane Map of the Circum Pacific Region constructed by Howell et al. This compilation showed that the addition of fragments of Gondwana on to the southern margin of the Eurasian continent went hand-in-hand with the accretion of island-arc terranes and microcontinental blocks derived primarily from Tethys. In terms of terrane analysis, the tectonic collage is composed of fragments, including the Siberian Block; the Mongolian island-arc assemblages forming the Central Asian Orogenic Belt; the Lhasa Block; the qiangtang Block; the Songpan-Ganzi Fold Belt; the Qiadam Block; the Tarim Block; and the North China (Sino-Korea) and South China
...
This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract.
