Study of thrust and nappe tectonics in the eastern Jiaodong Peninsula, China

Thrust and nappe tectonics have affected the eastern Jiaodong Peninsula, the easternmost terminal of the Sulu Ultra-high Pressure Metamorphic Belt. Four nappes have been mapped, named respectively the Shidao, Rongcheng, Mishan and Mouping nappes. The methods used included multi-scale struc- tural analysis and structural chronology analysis. These nappes define four deep level slip-thrust shear zones that were mainly active in the Mesozoic. The amount of ductile deformation decreases from the Shidao to Rongcheng to Mouping to Mishan shear zones, and shows an inverse relationship with temperature. 40Ar/39Ar chronological analysis and the chronological results of former workers reveal four movement steps defined by the development of thrusts and nappes in the late Triassic (210-180 Ma), extensional movement from the Jurassic to early Cretaceous (180-130 Ma), slip-thrust movement in the Early Cretaceous (130-120 Ma), and extensional movement since the Late Cretaceous (120 Ma). The order of boundary shear zone motion in the period of slip-thrust movement during the Early Cre- taceous (130-120 Ma) was along the Shidao, Rongcheng, Mouping and finally the Mishan shear zone. This resulted in clockwise rotation of the nappes relative to block west to the Tan-Lu Faults. Because of the similar evolutionary history of the Tan-Lu Faults and the thrust and nappe structure in the eastern Jiaodong Peninsula, slip dislocation along the Tan-Lu Faults might have been absorbed by thrust and nappe tectonics in the Jiaodong area in the Mesozoic era, resulting in much less dislocation on the Tan-Lu faults in North Eastern China than that in south along the Jiaodong Peninsula.

Tectono-chronologic constraints on a Mesozoic slip and thrust belt in the eastern Jiaodong Peninsula

A major slip and thrust belt within the eastern Jiaodong Peninsula is located at the eastern terminal of the Qinling-Dabie-Sulu orogenic belt between the Sino-Korea Block and Yangtze Block. Although a lot of isotope chronologic data have been obtained regionally, little structural chronological research has been conducted in this region and this paper corrects that. Syn-deformational minerals were system-atically selected from samples of the NE-ENE trending transpressional shear zones and transpres-sional nappes and carefully analysed using 40Ar/39Ar methods. Two tectonic events were defined with the first event resulting from early movement of transpressional nappes around 190 Ma ago. This ac-cords with the period of syn-orogenic sinistral slip of the Tan-Lu faults and clockwise shear in the Eastern Qinling-Tongbaishan part of the Qinling-Dabie-Sulu orogenic belt. The second event involved strikeslip thrust movement of deep shear zones between 130Ma and 120Ma. This resulted from the onset of Mesozoic tectonic conversion in the eastern Jiaodong Peninsula. The sinistral strikeslip-thrusting in Jiaodong Peninsula and the extensional tectonism (toward ESE) in Liaodong Peninsula probably resulted in the clockwise rotation of Korea Peninsula in late Mesozoic.