EGU2020-12874
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12874
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The South China and Indochina neighborhood in the assembled Gondwana

Weihua Yao1,2, Jian Wang3, Christopher Spencer4, Erin Martin2, and Zheng-Xiang Li2
Weihua Yao et al.
  • 1Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China (yaowh5@mail.sysu.edu.cn)
  • 2Curtin University, Perth, Australia (weihua.yao@curtin.edu.au)
  • 3Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, China (w1962jian@163.com)
  • 4Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada (spenchristoph@gmail.com)

Investigations on the late Neoproterozoic to early Paleozoic sedimentary strata of western South China and northern Indochina reveal a provenance affinity between the two, which was mainly derived from the local western part of South China. The newly discovered provenance featured differently from that of the typical Indian-Australian Gondwana siliciclastic source. Basin types and sedimentation histories of the two sedimentary basins in western South China and northern Indochina are also comparable. Furthermore, previous studies discovered the geochronological, petrological and geochemical similarities of the early Paleozoic magmatic rocks between these two regions, suggesting a connection between the two during the subduction of the proto-Tethys ocean towards the northern Gondwana and the accretion of Asian continents onto the Gondwana mainland. Utilizing all such geological information, we speculate in this study that South China and Indochina were probably in the neighbourhood on the northern Gondwana margin when the Gondwana semi-supercontinent was assembled. Specifically, Indochina was likely located to the southwest of South China during the late Neoproterozoic to early Paleozoic. Apart from sedimentation, neither Indochina nor the western part of South China got much deformational and metamorphic impaction from the collision between South China and northern Gondwana during that time.

How to cite: Yao, W., Wang, J., Spencer, C., Martin, E., and Li, Z.-X.: The South China and Indochina neighborhood in the assembled Gondwana, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-12874, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12874, 2020