Combining the single-grain low-temperature apatite fission track with high-temperature zircon U-Pb dating of sandstone can better reveal the temporal association between the source and depositional site, and identify both the age component of the source terrain and subsequent thermo-tectonic events after deposition. This paper introduces the single- grain zircon U-Pb dating and fission track (FT) dating of sediments from the Beipiao basin in Northeast China. The U-Pb ages of 18 single zircon grains collected from the early Jurassic Beipiao Formation range from 194.3±2.9 to 233.8±4.2 Ma and most of apatite FT ages are about 30-40 Ma, indicating that the eastern part of the Yan-Liao orogenic belt experienced an obvious tectonic seesawing during Meso-Cenozoic time. The eastern part of Liaoning Province (the Liaodong block) uplifted in the early Mesozoic (230-190 Ma) and formed a geological landscape of high mountains, while the western part of the province (the Liaoxi area) subsided relatively and thousand-meter-scale sediments were deposited. During the Cenozoic (30-40 Ma), the Liaoxi area uplifted as a whole, and the Xialiaohe Basin sank intensively. The topographic landscape had a great change: high mountains in the west and east of Liaoning Province and low plains in the central area.
Recent geophysical surveys and basin modeling suggest that the No.1 fault in the Ying- gehai basin (YGHB) is the seaward elongation of the Red River fault zone (RRFZ) in the South China Sea (SCS). The RRFZ, which separates the South China and Indochina block, extends first along the Yuedong fault, offshore of Vietnam, and then continues southward and breaks off into two branches: the Lupar fault and the Tinjia fault. The southern extension of the Lupar fault dies out beneath the NW Borneo while the Tinjia fault extends southeast and reaches the Brunei-Sabah area. According to the gravity and geomagnetic data, and the tectonic evolution of the basins, there are different evolution histories between the Wan’an basin (WAB) and the basins in the Nansha block. The Tinjia fault may be the boundary between the Balingian block and the Nansha block. Hence, the line linking the Yue- dong fault and the Tinjia fault, which both are continental margin faults and strike-slip ones in the geological evolution histories, constitute the boundary between the Indochina and Nansha block. The Lupar fault, in contrast, is an intraplate fault within the Indochina block. The results provide new hints for reconstructing the tectonic evolution history of the RRFZ and the opening of the SCS, and also a framework for hydrocarbon prospecting in the region.
LIU Baoming1,2,3, XIA Bin1, LI Xuxuan1,3, ZHANG Minqiang1,3, NIU Binhua2, ZHONG Lifeng1, JIN Qinghuan1,4 & JI Shaocheng1,5 1. Key Laboratory of Marginal Sea Geology and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences,Guangzhou 510640, China
