Geochronology and geochemistry of Cenozoic basalts from eastern Guangdong, SE China: constraints on the lithosphere evolution beneath the northern margin of the South China Sea

Initiation and evolution of the South China Sea: an overview

“…This model is seemingly supported by seismic tomography, which shows high temperature anomalies beneath the SCS (Huang and Zhao 2006;Zhao 2007). Geochemical data on some basaltic rocks are arguably consistent with the mantle plume model (Yan et al 2008;Zou and Fan 2010;Xu et al 2012;Huang et al 2013). However, the same type of alkalic basalts are common at the eastern margin of the Eurasian continent, which is mostly much younger than the SCS.…”

“…The South China Sea (SCS) is the largest marginal sea in the world, with an area of about 3.5 million km 2 , and has been a hot topic among geologists in China and western countries Zhou et al 2011;Xu et al 2012;Huang et al 2013;Li et al 2014a;Liu et al 2014;Tang et al 2014;Clift et al 2015;Lei et al 2015). Tectonically, the SCS is located at the junction of the Eurasian, Indian, Australian, and Pacific Plates and its formation is commonly attributed to interactions among these plates (Sun et al 2006;Xia et al 2006).…”

Geochemistry of Cenozoic basalts from the Bohai Bay Basin: Implications for a heterogeneous mantle source and lithospheric evolution beneath the eastern North China Craton

“…La/Yb and Dy/Yb ratios will be strongly fractionated by low-degree partial melting (b10%) of garnet peridotite (Xu, 2001). In contrast, La/Yb is only slightly fractionated and Dy/Yb is nearly unfractionated during the melting of spinel peridotite (e.g., Huang et al, 2013;Kuang et al, 2012;Shaw et al, 2003;Thirlwall et al, 1994).…”

Olivine and melt inclusion chemical constraints on the source of intracontinental basalts from the eastern North China Craton: Discrimination of contributions from the subducted Pacific slab

“…1). The sources of northeastern China basalts have been described as mixing between an isotopically depleted mantle and EM1 mantle (e.g., Liu et al, 2008;Chen et al, 2009;Zeng et al, 2010;Kuang et al, 2012;Xu et al, 2012a,b;Hong et al, 2013;Li et al, 2014), while those of southeastern China basalts have been characterized as mixing between a depleted mantle and EM2 mantle (e.g., Zou et al, 2000;Huang et al, 2013). Therefore, it is unreasonable to simply attribute the enriched components of eastern China basalts to the stagnant Pacific slab in the MTZ.…”