Geodynamic regime of the southeastern North China Craton before the Tectono-Magmatic Lull: evidence from ca. 2510 Ma and 2430 Ma igneous rocks in the Xuhuai micro-block

ABSTRACT

The Tectono-Magmatic Lull (TML) refers to the period between 2.37 and 2.24 Ga when magmatic activity declined globally, the cause of which remains debated. The North China Craton (NCC), which was formed by assembling several micro-blocks in Neoarchean to Paleoproterozoic, preserves the most records of magmatism across the TML. In this contribution, we report petrological, geochemical, and zircon U-Pb-Hf isotopic data of Paleoproterozoic basement rocks from the Xuhuai (XH) micro-block in the southeastern part of the NCC, and use them to constrain the geodynamic regime at the onset of the TML. Our data reveal that the central part of the XH micro-block is mainly composed of biotite granodioritic gneiss and plagioclase amphibolite, which is divided into a ca. 2510 Ma suite of low- and medium-pressure TTGs and a ca. 2430 Ma bimodal igneous suite including high-pressure TTG and plagioclase amphibolite. Variable magmatic zircon ε_Hf(t) values (1.9 to 7.2), Nb, Ta and Ti anomalies for the 2510 Ma TTGs indicate that the parental magma, which was involved with mantle materials, was generated in an active subduction environment in this pre-TML era. The felsic component of bimodal igneous rocks with high Na/Ta ratios (27 to 30) and stable Mg# (41 to 44) suggests their magma source region was as deep as the rutile stability field, and the delamination-derived asthenosphere mantle ascending. The influx of hot mantle induces thermal weakening and mechanical stretching of the overlying crust, leading to back-arc extension. The results of this study support the hypotheses that the NCC formed from micro-block amalgamation and the trigger of the TML could be the large-scale delamination of the lower crust into the mantle.

KEYWORDS:

• Xuhuai micro-block
• North China Craton
• TTG gneisses
• plagioclase amphibolites
• bimodal igneous rocks
• Tectono-Magmatic Lull

Acknowledgments

The authors appreciate the anonymous reviewers and editor, Dr. Robert J. Stern, whose comments helped to improve the article. Dr. Qizhong Zhou and Jianbin Shi are thanked for their assistance during fieldwork and drill core data collection. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41972198), the National Natural Science Foundation of Hunan province (No. 2022JJ30702), the Post-graduate Research Innovation Project of Hunan (CX20220167) and China Scholarship Council (CSC202206370119).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00206814.2023.2272178

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41972198), the National Natural Science Foundation of Hunan province (No. 2022JJ30702), the Post-graduate Research Innovation Project of Hunan (CX20220167) and China Scholarship Council (CSC202206370119).