Geochemical discriminations of sandstones from the Mohe Foreland basin, northeastern China: Tectonic setting and provenance

Abstract

Discrimination of sandstone geochemistry to tectonic settings and provenance has become an effective method in the studies of complex geological circumstances because of its higher sensitivity for the stability of tectonic settings in the period of basin deposition. Results of geochemical analyses in this paper show that sandstone samples of the Mesozoic Mohe basin fall in active continental margin settings on several kinds of tectonic discriminatory diagrams (Bhatia et al. 1983, 1986; Roser et al. 1986,1988,1999). The samples are also characterized by binary-system provenances, whose terrigenous clastic materials mainly derived from the oro-genic belt near the basin to the north and secondarily from the continental region in the south of the basin at the same time. The research results of rock geochemistry, combined with tectonic analysis, reflect that tectonic type of the basin is a foreland basin with nature of depositional accumulation of molass, but not continental rift basin considered in the past. This finding provides important evidence of rock geochemistry for the original structural linkage between the Mohe Foreland Basin and Mongol-Okhotsk Orogen in Mesozoic.