Early Paleozoic felsic magmatic evolution of the western Central Qilian belt, Northwestern China, and constraints on convergent margin processes

Abstract

The western part of the central belt of the Qilian orogenic belt, northeastern Tibetan Plateau, includes a compositionally diverse range of Cambrian to late Silurian felsic intrusions that reflect the changing tectonic process that molded this Paleozoic convergent margin. The Hf-isotopic compositional range of zircon from these rocks shows a significant role for Proterozoic crust – likely as microcontinents – rather than simply a history through oceanic arc accretion. Felsic magmatism includes shoshonitic magmas, and rarer shoshonite-OIB associations, dated from c. 465 to 445Ma, which together form at least 30% of the presently exposed Paleozoic granitic crust of this region. Accepting a typically shoshonite petrogenesis for these magmas, involving asthenospheric upwelling and consequent remobilization of subduction-modified lithosphere, would infer a post-collisional setting at this stage. This could, perhaps, reflect slab-detachment, convective thinning of the lithosphere or orogenic collapse, resulting from collision and subduction between the Quanji block and the Central Qilian block. However, this requires the onset of a post-collisional setting at least 25Ma before previously thought, and at the same time as intra-oceanic subduction is thought to have been active in other parts of the Qilian belt. These findings either require a reappraisal of the evidence for c. 490–440Ma intra-oceanic subduction, or the formation of voluminous high-K and shoshonite magmatism in a pre-collisional setting, perhaps related to a period of unusually strong syn-arc rifting.