Destruction of the North China Craton: Lithosphere folding-induced removal of lithospheric mantle?

Continental dynamics of Eastern China: Insights from tectonic history and receiver function analysis

“…Late Mesozoic highMg adakitic lavas have been reported from the eastern margin of the NCC, and these lavas might represent melting of ancient eclogitic lower crust (Zhai et al, 2007;Gao et al, 2012;Zhang, 2012). Gao et al (2004) suggested that delamination was initiated by 159 Ma and probably lasted through the Early Cretaceous in the eastern NCC.…”

“…Lower crustal delamination inducing the partial or complete removal of the mafic lower crust (Zandt and Ammon, 1995;Christensen, 1996) has been proposed for this region (He et al, 2013a) following the lowangle subduction of the Kula Plate. This process also led to the delamination of part of the upper lithosphere Zhang et al, 2012) or the lithospheric thinning. However, whether delamination affected the whole eastern NCC and removal of a domain as thick as 80-120 km of the lithosphere remain debated.…”

Late Mesozoic time constraints on tectonic changes of the Luanchuan Mo belt, East Qinling orogen, Central China

“…The continent-continent collision between North China Plate and Yangtze Plate began at ∼210 Ma (Jiang et al, 2010), In the middle Mesozoic, 170-135 Ma, the lithospheric was thinned from 160-220 km to 60-80 km in the east part of China (Gao et al, 1999;Deng et al, 2007;Yang et al, 2003;Zhai et al, 2003;Lu et al, 2006;Zhou, 2009), and one of the most reasonable explanations for this is delamination (Deng et al, 2007;Zhang, 2012), and crustmantle interaction occurred at the same stage (Zhai and Fan, 2002) (Fig. 10A, B).…”

Tectonic and deformation history of the Gyeonggi Massif in and around the Hongcheon area, and its implications in the tectonic evolution of the North China Craton: Comment

“…Where the tectonic boundary between the North China Craton and the South China Block in the Korean territory is located is an unsolved, critical question that not only is essential, not only to understand how the North China Craton collided with the South China Block during the Triassic, which created the Sulu-Dabie ultrahigh-pressure terrane in China, the largest ultrahigh-pressure metamorphic terrane on Earth (e.g., Zhang, 1997Zhang, , 1999Zhang, , 2000Zhang, , 2004Zhang, , 2012, and references therein), but also to illustrate the reconstruction of the Columbia supercontinent during the Paleoproterozoic, because the North China and the South China Block are parts of the supercontinent (e.g., Zhao and Cawood, 2012). Several models have been presented so far regarding the boundary between the North China Craton and the South China Block within the Korean territory.…”

“…Several models have been presented so far regarding the boundary between the North China Craton and the South China Block within the Korean territory. For example, Yin and Nie (1993) proposed that the North China Craton is divided from the South China Block by the Imjingang-Honam zones in Korea; in contrast, Zhang (1997) suggested that the North China Craton is separated from the South China Block by the Tanlu-Sulu-Imjingang zones, and the whole of South Korea tectonically belongs to the South China Block (also see Zhang, 1997Zhang, , 1999Zhang, , 2000Zhang, , 2002Zhang, , 2004Zhang, , 2012Zhang et al, 2006Zhang et al, , 2007. Notably, in the above-mentioned two models, the Gyeonggi Massif of South Korea is a part of the South China Block, although, among these various authors, the opinions about the tectonic affinity of other South Korean terranes are divergent.…”