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The East Asia continent is characterized by a mosaic architecture with various composing blocks, such as the North and South China blocks, which had been collaged in Late Permian to Triassic in response to the break-up of Pangea. In the Late Mesozoic, this continent was still in multi-plate convergent tectonics, surrounded by three oceans (Dong et al., 2008(Dong et al., , 2018. The convergence between the amalgamated Siberia and the composite North China-Mongolia Block led to the eastward scissors-like closure of the Mongol-Okhotsk ocean in the Middle-Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous and gave rise to the Mongol-Okhotsk orogeny. To the southwest, the closure of the Neo -Tethyan ocean led to accretion of the Lhasa block to the Eurasia along the Bangonghu-Nvjiang suture in the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous. The eastern part of the East Asia continent evolved to a broad, active magmatic margin due to westward subduction of the Paleo-Pacific oceanic plate in Jurassic to Early Cretaceous.

No abstract

The development of the sedimentary basin in the South Yellow Sea that lies between the Chinese mainland and the Korean Peninsula well documents the tectonic evolution of eastern China. However, the Moho morphology and its relationship with the basin in this area remain poorly understood. Here we used high‐resolution 2D seismic lines and well data to map the geometry, structure, and distribution of the sedimentary basin in the South Yellow Sea. Our results suggest that the South Yellow Sea Basin can be divided into two distinct depressions and three uplifts. The depressions consist of eight depositional sags that are largely controlled by ENE‐, EW‐, and WNW‐striking normal faults. The basin depth reaches 9,500 m in the depressions, but is only <2000 m in the uplift zones. Calculated using a gravity stripping method, the Moho depth varies between 27.4 and 31.5 km. The basin is isostatically compensated and the Moho morphology approximately mirrors that of the basin basement. The Moho lows correspond to the uplift zones and Moho highs correspond to the depression zones, with exception of a sag in the Northern Depression. This exception is caused by the presence of a geological body of high velocity and high density beneath the sag. This body is likely to represent high‐pressure metamorphic rock that initially formed during the collision between the Sino‐Korean and Yangtze cratons and are currently overlain by the sedimentary basin. Based on the stretching factors and strain rates of the South Yellow Sea Basin, we propose that development of the basin was primarily driven by the subduction and retreat of the Pacific Plate since the Late Cretaceous, combined by far‐field effects from the convergence between the Indian and Eurasian plates during the Cenozoic.