Location of Qiangtang Terranes. Bangong-Nujiang Suture Zone separates it from the Lhasa Terrane, which in turn is separated by the Indus-Yarlung suture zone from the Himalayas in the south.
Tectonic map of the Himalaya, modified after Le Fort & Cronin (1988). Red is Transhimalaya. Green is Indus-Yarlung suture zone, north of which lies Lhasa terrane, follow by Bangong-Nujiang Suture Zone and then Qiangtang terrane.

The Qiantang terrane is one of three main west-east-trending terranes of the Tibetan Plateau.

During the Triassic, a southward-directed subduction along its northern margin resulted in the Jin-Shajing suture, the limit between it and the Songpan-Ganzi terrane. During the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, the Lhasa terrane merged with its southern margin along the Bangong suture.[1] This suture, the closure of part of the Tethys Ocean, transformed the Qiantang terrane into a large-scale anticline.[2] The merging of the Lhasa and Qiangtang terranes resulted in the uplift of a palaeoplateau known as the Qiangtang Plateau,[3] which rapidly thinned later in the Cretaceous.[4]

The Qiantang terrane is now located at c. 5,000 m (16,000 ft) above sea level, but the timing of this uplift remains debated, with estimates ranging from the Pliocene-Pleistocene (3–5 Mya) to the Eocene (35 Mya) when the plateau was first denudated.[5]

See also

Qiangtang terrane related (from south to north)

References

Notes

  1. ^ Wang et al. 2008, Geologic setting, p. 475
  2. ^ Xu et al. 2013, Geologic setting, pp. 32–33
  3. ^ Zhang, Chenyu; Wu, Lei; Chen, Wuke; Zhang, Yongshu; Xiao, Ancheng; Zhang, Junyong; Chen, Siyuan; Chen, Hanlin (1 November 2020). "Early Cretaceous foreland-like Northeastern Qaidam Basin, Tibetan Plateau and its tectonic implications: Insights from sedimentary investigations, detrital zircon U–Pb analyses and seismic profiling". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 557: 109912. Bibcode:2020PPP...557j9912Z. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2020.109912. S2CID 225171627. Retrieved 7 December 2022.
  4. ^ Sun, Miao; Tang, Ju-Xing; Chen, Wei; Ma, Xu-Dong; Qu, Xiao-Ming; Song, Yang; Li, Xin-Yuan; Ding, Ji-Shun (March 2020). "Process of lithospheric delamination beneath the Lhasa–Qiangtang collision orogen: Constraints from the geochronology and geochemistry of Late Cretaceous volcanic rocks in the Lhasa terrane, central Tibet". Lithos. 356–357: 105219. doi:10.1016/j.lithos.2019.105219. S2CID 210619771. Retrieved 7 December 2022.
  5. ^ Xu et al. 2013, Introduction, pp. 31–32

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