| Abstract: | Many major ophiolite bodies can best be explained by detachment and initiation of subduction at a spreading axis in a narrow oceanic basin bordered on the external side by a passive continental foreland margin, followed by subduction of the remnant ocean basin and syn-collision emplacement of the ophiolite and overlying arc system onto the foreland. Evidence from Burma and the Philippines suggests that detachment and subduction at a spreading axis were related to regional compressive stress within an earlier collision belt on the internal side of the ophiolite. In Burma, detachment of a Jurassic ophiolite was in response to foreland thrusting in a Triassic collision belt to the east, while in the western Philippines, detachment of a Palaeocene ophiolite can most easily be explained as a response to back-thrusting in a late Cretaceous collision belt in Mindanao. |
