Indian plate paleogeography, subduction and horizontal underthrusting below Tibet: Paradoxes, controversies and opportunities

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Abstract

The India-Asia collision zone is the archetype to calibrate geological responses to continent-continent collision, but hosts a paradox: There is no orogen-wide geological record of oceanic subduction after initial collision around 60-55 Ma, yet thousands of kilometers of post-collisional subduction occurred before the arrival of unsubductable continental lithosphere that currently horizontally underlies Tibet. Kinematically restoring incipient horizontal underthrusting accurately predicts geologically estimated diachronous slab break-off, unlocking the Miocene of Himalaya-Tibet as a natural laboratory for unsubductable lithosphere convergence. Additionally, three endmember paleogeographic scenarios exist with different predictions for the nature of post-collisional subducted lithosphere but each is defended and challenged based on similar data types. This paper attempts at breaking through this impasse by identifying how the three paleogeographic scenarios each challenge paradigms in geodynamics, orogenesis, magmatism or paleogeographic reconstruction and identify opportunities for methodological advances in paleomagnetism, sediment provenance analysis, and seismology to conclusively constrain Greater Indian paleogeography.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbernwac074
Number of pages19
JournalNational Science Review
Volume9
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Aug 2022

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of China Science Publishing & Media Ltd.

Keywords

  • Himalaya
  • Tibet
  • collision
  • orogenesis
  • reconstruction
  • subduction

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