Expanding the Wilson Cycle Based on Worldwide Comparison of Continental Structures Revealed by Lithospheric Geophysical Investigations

Worldwide comparison of lithospheric investigation results achieved from projects of COCORP, BIRPS, DEKORP, LITHOPROBE, ICDP, ECORS and SINOPROBE enables us to expand the classical Wilson cycle, which mainly describes evolution of ocean plates, into a complete and detailed cycle that describes generation, development and evolution of both ocean and continent plates. The expanded Wilson cycle presented in this paper introduces the evolution sequences of continental lithospheric processes by adding into the classical Wilson cycle with ocean-continent transition, continental collision and accretion, as well as continental rifting and splitting in details. These mentioned continental lithospheric processes have been presented by the author in a series of recent review papers in detail, and their summary and further deduction is presented in this paper.