Based mainly on field geological observation and geochronologic data, six tectonic units have been recognized in western Inner Mongolia (China), including, from south to north: North China Craton (NCC), Southern Orogenic Belt (SOB), Hunshandake Block (HB), Northern Orogenic Belt (NOB), South Mongolia microcontinent (SMM), and Southern margin of Ergun Block (SME), suggesting that the tectonic fr...

South China, composed of the Yangtze and Cathaysia Blocks and the intervening Jiangnan orogenic belt, has been central to the debate on the tectonic evolution of East Asia. Here we investigate the crustal structure and composition of South China from seismic data employing the H-k stacking technique. Our results show that the composition and seismic structure of the crust in the Jiangnan orogen...

Ophiolitic rocks in the southeastern part of the Zagros Orogenic Belt can be separated from southwest to northeast, into two groups: the Neyriz ophiolites and the Naien–Shahrebabak–Baft ophiolites. The southeast sector of Sanandaj-Sirjan wasdelimited by the two nearly synchronous ophiolitic belts in its southwestern and northeastern margins. In this study, new ophiolitic formation models were u...

The Qinling orogen (Fig. 1) extends for over 2000 km across central China, separating the Archean and Proterozoic Sino-Korean block in the north from the Proterozoic Yangtze block in the south. Although the orogen has been recognized as a continental collision zone for some time, the nature, age, and duration of the collision have been the subject of considerable debate (see review in Hacker et...

A compilation of magnetic data acquired during the past three decades for a region in central Saudi Arabia where Precambrian basement is partly exposed on the Arabian shield and partly concealed by overlying Phanerozoic strata, shows a central sector of conspicuous N-S-trending anomalies, a heterogeneous western sector of short-wavelength, high-intensity anomalies, and an eastern sector of lowt...

In orogenic belts, a basal décollement zone often develops at depth to accommodate the shortening due to folding and thrusting of the sedimentary cover. In the Early Mesozoic intracontinental Xuefengshan Belt of South China, such a décollement zone is exposed in the core of anticlines formed by the emplacement of the late-orogenic granitic plutons. The detailed, multi-scale structural analysis ...

The Lachlan Fold Belt is well known for its complex deformational history, with a number of orogenic events and associated structural styles recognised. Recent syntheses of this orogenic evolution have emphasised the difficulty of identifying fold-belt-wide deformational episodes and have inferred the existence of diachronous deformation zones with an overall merging of episodic orogenic events...

The world-class Macraes orogenic gold deposit (∼10Moz resource) formed during the late metamorphic uplift of a metasedimentary schist belt in southern New Zealand. Mineralising fluids, metals and metalloids were derived from within the metasedimentary host. Helium and argon extracted from fluid inclusions in sulphide mineral grains (three crush extractions from one sample) have crustal signatur...

A foreland basin system is defined as: (a) an elongate region of potential sediment accommodation that forms on continental crust between a contractional orogenic belt and the adjacent craton, mainly in response to geodynamic processes related to subduction and the resulting peripheral or retroarc fold-thrust belt; (b) it consists of four discrete depozones, referred to as the wedge-top, forede...