Limestone, a major part of the global sedimentary succession, susceptible to post-depositional diagenesis. Studies of limestone geochemistry are essential in the discrimination of tectonic settings of basins in which the limestones were deposited. Six Late Mesozoic and one Tertiary limestone successions of Tibet, western China, that were deposited in oceanic plateau, passive continental margin, active continental margin (fore-arc basin, back-arc basin and foreland basin) and continental inland freshwater basins were analyzed for their major, trace and rare earth element (REE) composition. This geochemical dataset, in combination with the Deep Sea Drilling

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The Early Mesozoic tectonic regime of the South China Block was characterized by strike-slip movement. The northeastern South China Block dominated by recumbent folding, thrusting, and foreland imbrication. Between the North and South China blocks in southern Qinling, there was dextral transpression, but in the western South China Block, sinistral transpression took place. In central South China, sinistral transtension prevails. In contrast, both the eastern and western South China margins, composed of Precambrian basement, appears to be little deformed. These differences are due to lateral extrusion of the South China Block. Extrusion resulted from (a) an overall southerly compression (the North China Block against the South China Block) and indentation of the rigid North China Block into the weaker South China Block, (b) unconstrained South China southern margin, containing a subduction zone between the Indochina Block and the South China Block, allowing the escaped materials to be consumed, (c) an association of strongly constrained margins of the central Sichuan Craton in the western South China margin and the Southeast China Massif in the eastern South China margin, (d) structural obstacle of the Jiangnan Uplift mainly composed of the Proterozoic metamorphic basement, and (e) a previously thickened, gravitationally unstable, thermally weakened crust of the eastern Yangtze valley. The extrusion deformation began about at the beginning of the Jurassic/the end of the Triassic, and terminated at the end of the Cretaceous.