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Updated: Oct 15, 2025

Kinematic History of a Salient-recess Junction Explored through a Combined Approach of Field Data and Analog Sandbox Modeling
Published on: August 5, 2016
Alpine-style nappes thrust over ancient North China continental margin demonstrate large Archean horizontal plate
Yating Zhong1, Timothy Kusky2,3, Lu Wang4
1State Key Lab for Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, and Center for Global Tectonics, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China.
Abstract:
Whether modern-style plate tectonics operated on early Earth is debated due to a paucity of definitive records of large-scale plate convergence, subduction, and collision in the Archean geological record. Archean Alpine-style sub-horizontal fold/thrust nappes in the Precambrian basement of China contain a Mariana-type subduction-initiation sequence of mid-ocean ridge basalt blocks in a 1600-kilometer-long mélange belt, overthrusting picritic-boninitic and island-arc tholeiite bearing nappes, in turn emplaced over a passive margin capping an ancient Archean continental fragment. Picrite-boninite and tholeiite units are 2698 ± 30 million years old marking the age of subduction initiation, with nappes emplaced over the passive margin at 2520 million years ago. Here, we show the life cycle of the subduction zone and ocean spanned circa 178 million years; conservative plate velocities of 2 centimeters per year yield a lateral transport distance of subducted oceanic crust of 3560 kilometers, providing direct positive evidence for horizontal plate tectonics in the Archean.
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