Timing and scale of the destruction of the North China craton: Revelation from the Early Cretaceous volcanic rocks in Suhongtu Depression of Inggen-Ejin Banner Basin

Abstract: Suhongtu Depression in Inggen-Ejin Banner basin is located on the northwestern margin of the North China Craton. The periphery of the North China Craton is a weak tectonic belt, with Hing - Mongolian orogenic zone on the northern margin, Dabie - Qinling orogenic belt on the southern margin, Tan-Lu fracture zone and Pacific subduction zone on the eastern margin. Hetao rift and Fenwei rift are roughly coincident with positions of Paleoproterozoic high-temperature metamorphic rocks and the central orogenic belts, which were formed during the breakup period of the North China Craton and western blocks approximately 1.85 billion years ago. However, Suhongtu Depression is located on the southern edge of the Central Asia Orogenic Belt, and also lies at the junction of two plates. These structural weakness belts experienced subduction in different periods, and might have served as the starting locations of lithospheric thinning, and the time of their subduction and collision was the beginning of the destruction of the North China Craton. Craton destruction regions occurred mainly to the east of the Taihang Mountains, whereas thinning happened in Fenwei rift, Hetao rift and Suhongtu Depression west of the Taihang Mountains. Therefore, damages to the Suhongtu Depression lithosphere occurred on the northwest margin of the North China Craton in the late Early Cretaceous (~ 110Ma), and hence the damaged regions in the Craton were distributed discontinuously in geography, which resulted from different destruction periods and dynamic mechanisms of the lithosphere in different regions.