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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 68 (1984)

Issue: 4. (April)

First Page: 474

Last Page: 474

Title: Rifting, Drifting, and Crustal Accretion in Taiwan: ABSTRACT

Author(s): W. G. Ernst, C. S. Ho, J. G. Liou

Abstract:

Permian and younger rocks in Taiwan record the effects of rifting plus passive margin deposition, sea-floor spreading, convergence and/or oblique closure, volcanic plus plutonic arc construction, arrival of ophiolitic materials, and suturing of exotic trench-argillite and andesitic arc assemblages. Large portions of the sialic crust formed essentially in situ, then were deformed and thrust landward during subsequent tectonic events; however, far-traveled terranes and oceanic fragments played a substantial role in the accretionary process. Recognized and suspected exotics include: (1) lower or middle Mesozoic amphibolites plus serpentinites (now high-rank metaophiolites), situated anomalously in the upper Mesozoic Tailuko metamorphosed miogeoclinal and/or continental slope belt; (2) upper Mesozoic Yuli high-pressure, low-temperature metamorphic trench-argillite melange complex; (3) Mio-Pliocene tectonic blocks of blueschistic ophiolite emplaced in the east-central part of the Yuli terrane; (4) ophiolitic olistostromal debris supplied in the Pliocene to the Lichi Melange of the Coastal Range from Miocene oceanic crust of the South China Sea; and (5) the Neogene calc-alkaline Luzon arc which collided with the sialic crust-capped Asiatic plate in the Plio-Pleistocene. The Cenozoic slate series is an additional, largely fault-bounded parautochthonous terrane deposited as the Tertiary miogeoclinal cover along the Asiatic continental margin and thrust westward during the Plio-Pleistocene arc collision. Taiwan thus represents an intricate Phanerozoic collage of l thotectonic belts, produced by various accretionary processes.

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