The significance of geological and zircon age data derived from the wall rocks of the Ailao Shan–Red River Shear Zone, NW Vietnam

Abstract

This paper offers new evidence on whether the Ailao Shan–Red River Shear Zone of NW Vietnam is part of a suture zone between two continental blocks (the IndoChina Block and the South China Block) or whether it is itself of intracontinental origin, developed within the South China margin. To help clarify the role that the Ailao Shan–Red River Shear Zone plays in South China tectonic reconstructions, we gathered new whole-rock geochemistry, structural field data, and zircon U–Pb (SHRIMP) ages from granites, rhyodacites, and migmatites that occur within geological units adjacent to both the SW and NE sides of the Red River Fault Zone, a segment of the larger shear zone. The new zircon ages show that both walls of the Red River Fault Zone contain metamorphic and intraplate A-type granitoid rocks of Late Permian–Early Triassic age (263–240 Ma) and are of Indosinian origin. In the SW wall, the Fan Si Pan complex is a Neoproterozoic basement of metagranites and metasediments that was intruded by Late Permian (∼260Ma), peralkaline, A-type granites and by subalkaline, A-type, biotite granite of Eocene age (∼35Ma), containing xenoliths of gneissified Permian granitoids. The two intrusive episodes were separated by regional tectonic deformations occurring within a transpressional regime of a NW/W-vergent thrusting with a left-lateral oblique component, that was associated with greenschist to amphibolite facies metamorphism, presumably also of Eocene age (∼50–35 Ma), and that may have been related to the left-lateral movement on the Ailao Shan–Red River Shear Zone. In the NE wall, the Lo Gam complex is a Neoproterozoic basement (∼767 Ma) that was repeatedly subjected to tectonothermal activity throughout the Palaeozoic (at ∼450–420 Ma, ∼350 Ma, ∼265 Ma), ending in the Early Triassic (∼248 Ma). There was no thermal overprint during the Cenozoic. In this wall, a significant part of the Permo-Triassic thermotectonism was ductile shearing that was concentrated along dextral, strike-slip NW-trending zones in the vicinity the Ailao Shan–Red River Shear Zone but that became a type of NE/N-ward extensional/contractional, regional movement further away of it. An early shearing on the Ailao Shan–Red River Shear Zone may date back to the Permo-Triassic and we consider that this probably originated in a continental fault zone initiated in the hinterland of the oblique Indosinian collisional zone.