Abstract: | Late Permian stratigraphic, sedimentary and paleotectonic studies along a corridor profile across the Yangtze paleocontinent and its southern margin reveal the sedimentary evolution, subdivide the depositional sequences, and reconstruct the stratigraphic framework based on lateral correlation and tracing of the bounding surfaces and depositional systems. This corridor profile transects the Yangtze craton and a molasse sag zone in its southern margin. It is demonstrated that the Late Permian sedimentary evolution along the investigated profile evidently resulted from the interplay of sea level change, differential subsidence and sediment supply within the given tectonic units. In the cratonic interior, high frequency sea level fluctuation exerts an important control on the formation of the third order and fourth order sequences, and is the basis for transfacies correlation. The evolution of sequence succession in the taphrogenic zone is so much affected by the intense tectonic subsidence that it is hardly correlatable to that in the cratonic interior. |