Formation and evolution of the Archean continental crust of China:A review

The mainland of China is composed of the North China Craton,the South China Craton,the Tarim Craton and other young orogehie belts.Amongst the three cratons,the North China Craton has been studied most and noted for its widely-distributed Archean basement rocks.In this paper,we assess and compare the geology,rock types,formation age and geochemical composition features of the Archean basements of the three cratons.They have some common characteristics,including the fact that the crustal rocks prior to the Paleoarchean and the supracrustal rocks of the Neoarehean were preserved,and Tonalite-Trondhjemtite- Granodiorite (TTG)magmatism and tectono-magmatism occurred at about 2.7 Ga and about 2.5 Ga respectively.The Tarim Craton and the North China Craton show more similarities in their early Precambrian crustal evolution.Significant findings on the Archean basement of the North China Craton are coneluded to be:(1)the tectonic regime in the early stage (>3.1 Ga)is distinct from modem plate tectonics;(2)the continental crust accretion occurred mostly from the late Mesoarchean to the early Neoarehean period;(3)a huge linear tectonic belt already existed in the late Neoarchean period,suggesting the beginning of plate tectonics;and (4)the preliminary cratonization had already been completed by about 2.5 Ga. Hadean detrital zircons were found at a total of nine locations within China.Most of them show clear oscillatory zoning,sharing similar textures with magmatic zircons from interrnediate-felsic magmatic rocks. This indicates that a fair quantity of continental material had already developed on Earth at that time.