Jurassic Tectonic Revolution in China and New Interpretation of the “Yanshan Movement”

Abstract: With acquisition and accumulation of new data of structural geological investigations and high‐resolution isotopic dating data, we have greatly improved our understanding of the tectonic events occurring in eastern China during the period from the Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous and may give a new interpretation of the nature, timing and geodynamic settings of the “Yanshan Movement”. During the Mid‐Late Jurassic (165±5 Ma), great readjustment of plate amalgamation kinematics took place in East Asia and the tectonic regime underwent great transformation, thus initiating a new tectonic regime in which the North China Block was the center and different plates converged toward it from the north, east and southwest and forming the “East Asia convergent” tectonic system characterized by intracontinental subduction and orogeny. As a consequence, the crustal lithosphere of the East Asian continent thickened considerably during the Late Jurassic, followed immediately by Early Cretaceous substantial lithospheric thinning and craton destruction featured by drastic lithospheric extension and widespread volcano‐magmatic activities, resulting in a major biotic turnover from the Yanliao biota to Jehol Biota. Such a tremendous tectonic event that took place in the continent of China and East Asia is the basic connotation of the “Yanshan Movement”. In the paper, according to the deformation patterns, geodynamic settings and deep processes, the “Yanshan Movement” is redefined as the Late Jurassic East Asian multi‐directional plate convergent tectonic regime and its associated extensive intracontinental orogeny and great tectonic change that started at ˜165±5 Ma. The substantial lithospheric attenuation in East China is considered the post‐effect of the Yanshanian intracontinental orogeny and deformation.