Change in the direction of Early Cretaceous tectonic extension in eastern North China Craton as the result of Paleo-Pacific/Eurasian plate interaction

Abstract

How the subduction direction of the Paleo-Pacific plate beneath the Eurasian plate changes in the Early Cretaceous remains highly controversial due to the disappearance of the subducted oceanic plate. Intraplate deformation structures in the east Asian continent, however, provide excellent opportunities for reconstructing paleostress fields in continental interior in relation to the Paleo-Pacific/Eurasian plate interaction. Anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS), geological, and geochronological analyses of post-kinematic mafic dykes intruding the detachment fault zone of the Wulian metamorphic core complex (WL MCC) in Jiaodong Peninsula exemplify emplacement of mantle-sourced dykes in a WNW–ESE (301°–121°) oriented tectonic extensional setting at ca. 120 Ma. In combination with the results from our previous kinematic analysis of the MCC, a ca. 21° clockwise change in the direction of intraplate extension is obtained for early (135–122 Ma) extensional exhumation of the MCC to late (122–108 Ma) emplacement of the dykes. Such a change is suggested to be related to the variation in subduction direction of the Paleo-Pacific plate beneath the Eurasian plate, from westward (pre-122 Ma) to west-northwestward (post-122 Ma).

Keywords

Mafic dykes / Magnetic fabrics / Wulian metamorphic core complex in North China Craton / Tectonic extension / Subduction of Paleo-Pacific plate

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Lei Ji: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Jun Deng: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Supervision, Methodology, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Junlai Liu: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization. Xiaoyu Chen: Investigation. Xuefei Liu: Investigation. Xinmin Yang: Investigation. Jinlong Ni: Investigation, Funding acquisition. Liangliang Zhang: Writing – original draft, Data curation. Yu An: Writing – original draft, Data curation. Pengfei Tian: Investigation.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos: 42130801, 41430211, 90814006, and 42072226) and the “Deep-time Digital Earth” Science and Technology Leading Talents Team Funds for the Central Universities for the Frontiers Science Center for Deep-time Digital Earth, CUGB (Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities; Grant No: 2652023001). Careful reviews from two anonymous reviewers and constructive comments from editors M. Santosh and Sanghoon Kwon are deeply thanked. The authors are grateful to Haiyan Li, Kunkun Yang, Xianwei Jiao, Zhiguo Zhou, and Qing Wang from CUGB (Beijing, China), and Cui Xu and Liying Zhao from IRGMRSHP (Langfang, China) for their help with laboratorial work. Lei Ji would like to show his gratitude to Hanqing Zhao, Weiwei Bian, and Bo Zhang from CUGB (Beijing, China) for the valuable discussion.

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