Provenance of Cretaceous trench slope sediments from the Mesozoic Wandashan Orogen, NE China: Implications for determining ancient drainage systems and tectonics of the Paleo-Pacific

Abstract

The Wandashan Orogen of NE China is a typical accretionary orogen related to Paleo-Pacific subduction. The Raohe Complex, as a major part of the orogen, consists of mid-Triassic to mid-Jurassic radiolarian chert and intraoceanic igneous rocks in an accretionary prism overlain by weakly sheared terrestrial-sourced clastic trench slope sediments. Sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe U-Pb dating and LA-MC-ICPMS Hf isotopic analysis of detrital zircons from the terrestrial-sourced Yongfuqiao Formation sandstone show that most zircons are Phanerozoic (90%): 140–150 Ma (10%), 180–220 Ma (25%), 240–270 Ma (15%), 300–360 Ma (15%), 391–395 Ma (3%), and 450–540 Ma (20%), whereas 10% are Precambrian in age. About 90% of the zircons have eHf(t) values ranging from +11.1 to −12.8. This suggests that the major provenance of the trench slope sediments was from the adjacent eastern segment of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt and the Jiamusi Block. The age of the Yongfuqiao Formation is constrained to the earliest Cretaceous, which represents the accretion time of the mid-Triassic to mid-Jurassic oceanic complexes. When compared with the Mino Complex in Japan and the Tananao Complex in Taiwan, three different provenances are identified suggesting three ancient drainage systems which transported sediments from NE China, North China, and South China to the Paleo-Pacific subduction-accretion system.