ZEDONG TERRANE, A MID CRETACEOUS INTRA-OCEANIC ARC, SOUTH TIBET

The Zedong Terrane forms a discontinuous belt of volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks adjacent to the Yarlung Zangbo River in south eastern Tibet. It extends from Luobusa to 20km west of Zedong. The Zedong Terrane lies within the Indus—Yarlung Zangbo suture zone and may represent an intra\|oceanic island arc that once lay between the Lhasa (Asian) and Himalayan (Indian) terranes. Rare fossils within the terrane indicate active volcanism during the Early Cretaceous.Ultramafic rocks of the Dazhuqu Terrane, including harzburgite and gabbro are thrust over the southern margin of the Zedong Terrane along a steep south\|dipping thrust fault. To the west of Zedong, this fault is marked by a distinctive zone of serpentinite. East of Zedong, the northernmost rocks of the terrane are thrust onto Oligocene molasse deposits of the Luobusa Formation and Cretaceous plutonic rocks of the Gangdese batholith (Lhasa Terrane). These thrusts form part of a northward directed thrust stack \| the Renbu\|Zedong thrust system of Yin et al.., (1994, 1999).