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Timing of the initial collision between the Indian and Asian continents

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Abstract

There exist three mainstream opinions regarding the timing of the initial collision between the Indian and Eurasian continents, namely, 65±5, 45±5, and 30±5 Ma. Five criteria are proposed for determining which tectonic event was related to the initial collision between India and Asia: the rapid decrease in the rate of plate motion, the cessation of magmatic activity originating from the subduction of oceanic crust, the end of sedimentation of oceanic facies, the occurrence of intracontinental deformation, and the exchange of sediments sourced from two continents. These criteria are used to constrain the nature of these tectonic events. It is proposed that the 65±5 Ma tectonic event is consistent with some of the criteria, but the upshot of this model is that the magmatic activity originating from the Tethyan subduction since the Mesozoic restarted along the southern margin of the Asian continent in this time after a brief calm, implying that the subduction of the Neotethys slab was still taking place. The magmatic activity that occurred along the southern margin of the Asian continent had a 7-Myr break during 72–65 Ma, which in this study is interpreted as having resulted from tectonic transformation from subduction to transform faulting, indicating that the convergence between the Indian and Asian continents was once dominated by strike-slip motion. The 30±5 Ma tectonic event resulted in the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, which was related to the late stage of the convergence between these two continents, namely, a hard collision. The 45±5 Ma tectonic event is in accordance with most of the criteria, corresponding to the initial collision between these two continents.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Xu Jifeng, Wu Fuyuan and Ding Lin for their insightful and helpful discussion that helped to improve this manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge the critical and constructive comments and suggestions made by two anonymous reviewers, who provided useful comments that significantly improved this paper’s clarity of scientific presentation. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41672220 and 41130312) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB03010500).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    ErChie Wang

  2. Chinese Academy of Sciences Centre for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    ErChie Wang

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Correspondence to ErChie Wang.

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Wang, E. Timing of the initial collision between the Indian and Asian continents. Sci. China Earth Sci. 60, 626–634 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-016-5136-3

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