“…Recently, a large amount of data have been gathered from studies related to the Yanshanian magmatism in the eastern part of the NCC (Zhang, 2007;Gao et al, 2008), with several workers correlating the process with lithosphere thinning (Shao et al, 2000(Shao et al, , 2007Li et al, 2004bLi et al, , 2006Li et al, , 2007bXu et al, 2004;Huang and Zhao, 2006;Zhang, 2007;Xu, 1999Xu, , 2007Huang et al, 2007;Kusky et al, 2007;Cope and Graham, 2007;Gao et al, 2008;Xu and Zhao, 2009;Zhao, 2009;Lee et al, 2010;Li et al, 2011). However, the detailed mechanism and tectonic setting related to the lithosphere thinning are significantly different.…”