HYBRID ACCRETIONARY/COLLISIONAL MECHANISM OF PALEOZOIC ASIAN CONTINENTAL GROWTH: NEW PLATE TECTONIC PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Continental crust is formed above subduction zones by well-known process of “juvenile crust growth”. This new crust is in modern Earth assembled into continents by two ways: (i) short-lived collisions of continental blocks with the Laurussian or later Eurasian continent along the “Alpine Himalayan collisional/interior orogens” in the heart of the Pangean continental plates realm; and (ii) long lived lateral accretion of ocean-floor fragments along “circum-Pacific accretionary/peripheral orogens” at the border of the PaleoPacific and modern Pacific oceanic plate.