Structural style and deformation mechanism of the southern Dabashan foreland fold-and-thrust belt, central China

The Daba Mountains define the southern margin of the East Qinling orogenic belt, and form the boundary of the Sichuan basin in the north and northeast. The Daba Mountains can be divided into two structural belts by the NW-striking Chengkou fault, namely the northern Dabashan thrust-nappe belt and the southern Dabashan foreland fold-and-thrust belt. The southern Dabashan fold-and-thrust belt is a southwestward extruding thin-skinned thrust wedge, showing obvious belted change in deformation style and deformation intensity along the dip direction, and can be divided further into three sub-belts, i.e. the imbricate thrust sub-belt characterized by imbricate stepped-thrust sheets, the thrust-fold sub-belt characterized by the combination of the equally-developed thrusts and related folds, and the detachment-fold sub-belt characterized by box folds and closed overturned-isoclinal folds on the outcrops. Several kinds of structures have been recognized or inferred, including imbricate thrust system, passive-roof duplex (triangle zone), fault-related folds, back-thrust system and pop-up structure. The NE-SW compressive stress from the Qinling orogenic belt and detachment layers in the covering strata are the two most important determinants of deformation style. After the collision between the North China block and Yangtze block at the end of the Middle Triassic, the northward intracontinental subduction along the southern edge of the Qinling orogenic belt was initiated, which led to the corresponding southward thrusting in the upper crust. The thrusting propagated towards the foreland through the Jurassic and extended to the southernmost part of the southern Daba Mountains around the end of the Early Cretaceous, with thrusting deformation to be preferentially developed along major detachment layers and progressing upwards from the Lower Sinian through the Lower Cambrian and Silurian to Middle-Lower Triassic. Translated from Geotectonica et Metallogenia, 2006, 30(3): 294–304 译自: 大地构造与成矿学]