Late Paleozoic tectonic and magmatic evolution of the Chinese West Tianshan

Bo Wang (1, 2) , Michel Faure (2) , Liangshu S. Shu (1) , Dominique Cluzel (2) , Jacques Charvet (2)

1 Department of Earth Sciences [Nanjing]
2 ISTO - Institut des Sciences de la Terre d'Orléans

In Xinjiang Province of NW China, the Tianshan Belt belongs to the Late Paleozoic Variscan orogens that shaped up the Eurasian continent. Most of geologists drew to a conclusion that the Tianshan Belt was built during Paleozoic times through oceanic subduction, accretion and collision between the main Precambrian cratons such as Tarim, Junggar and Kazakhstan and some intervening microcontinents such as the Yili Block. However, there are still some controversies on the geodynamics of Paleozoic Tianshan, especially the West Tianshan (WTS), which was less studied than the East Tianshan. In particular, the tectonic significance in terms of heat transfer and crustal rheology of the huge magmatic rocks that develop in WTS is rarely taken into account in the lithosphere-scale evolution models.

Domains: Tectonics

Bo Wang, Michel Faure, Liangshu S. Shu, Dominique Cluzel, Jacques Charvet. Late Paleozoic tectonic and magmatic evolution of the Chinese West Tianshan. Geophysical Research Abstracts, 2005, Vienne, Austria. pp.7, 00402. ⟨hal-00104272⟩