Late Neoproterozoic–Early Paleozoic evolution of the South China Block as a retroarc thrust wedge/foreland basin system

U–Pb ages and Hf isotopes of detrital zircons from pre-Devonian sequences along the southeast Yangtze: a link to the final assembly of East Gondwana

“…J. Wang et al 2013d;. The provenance of Upper Neoproterozoic to Ordovician samples from the SE margin of the SCC is therefore interpreted to be the uplifted Precambrian basement in the SCC, which suggests recycling of basement rocks (Wu et al 2010;Li et al 2013;Jiang et al 2014).…”

“…This model was disputed for the lack of evidence to place the SCC as a downgoing plate for the inferred collision event (Cawood et al 2017). Moreover, unconformity between the Cambrian and Ordovician strata in the Yunkai area along the southernmost margin of the SCC was observed (Wang et al 2010b;Xu et al 2013;Jiang et al 2014), and two amphibolite-granulite facies metamorphic events on the Cathaysia side of the SCC at 533 Ma and 495 Ma were recently reported (Zhang et al 2011;Li et al 2017). These authors proposed that the Early Palaeozoic tectonic and metamorphic events in the SCC likely belong to the assembly of Australia and India-SCC during the Cambrian and Ordovician (Meert, 2003;Boger & Miller, 2004;Veevers, 2004).…”

“…Wang et al 2010b;Shu et al 2014); (2) the sedimentary facies across Cathaysia to Yangtze are continuous without records of Early Palaeozoic ophiolites in the SCC (e.g. Jiang et al 2014;Yao, Li & Li, 2014a); and (3) the 1.1−0.9 Ga detritus derived from North India was able to reach the Cathaysia side of the SCC as early as the Ediacaran and to be transported northward to the Yangtze side of the SCC in the Cambrian. Accordingly, we propose a progressive filling of an intracontinental foreland basin between North India and Yangtze in the Cambrian, rather than an ocean-continental configuration process, to account for the transportation of detritus to Yangtze.…”

The first sphinctozoan-bearing reef from an Ordovician back-arc basin

“…Firstly, new geochronological, petrological, structural, and sedimentological data from the South China plate indicate a retroarc thrust belt and foreland basin system in the southeastern Yangtze Block and suggest that the Cathaysian Land may represent a continental arc (Chen et al 2006;Jiang et al 2014;Ran et al 2015). Increasing evidence shows that SW Japan originated from the Cathaysian margin (Aoki et al 2014;Isozaki and Kase 2014) and represented a Late Ordovician (about 445 Ma) arc-trench system that grew along the eastern margin of the South China plate (Aoki et al 2014;Isozaki 2011).…”

Detrital zircon U–Pb geochronology and geochemistry of late Neoproterozoic – early Cambrian sedimentary rocks in the Cathaysia Block: constraint on its palaeo-position in Gondwana supercontinent

“…Palaeomagnetic records show that the South China Block (SCB) should have been near western/northwestern Australia and the India-Himalaya region of the Gondwana margin (Metcalfe, 1996;Yang et al 2004;Zhang et al 2015). Stratigraphic correlations indicate that the SCB was most likely linked to northwestern India during the late Neoproterozoic Era, and then separated from India and moved to northwestern Australia during the early Cambrian Period (Yu et al 2012;Jiang et al 2013). By comparing the polar position derived from the early Palaeozoic sedimentary rocks to previously documented poles of the Yangtze Block (Huang et al 2000), Yang et al (2004) proposed that the SCB should have been near Western Australia.…”