Bo Huang 1 , Man Liu1, Timothy M. Kusky 1, Tim E. Johnson 1,2, Simon A. Wilde 2, Dong Fu 1, Hao Deng1 & Qunye Qian1
1Badong National Observation and Research Station of Geohazards, State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, Center for Global Tectonics, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China.
2School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the Institute for Geoscience Research, Timescales of Mineral Systems Group, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6102, Australia
The Earth’s interior and surficial systems underwent dramatic changes during the Paleoproterozoic, but the interaction between them remains poorly understood. Rocks deposited in orogenic foreland basins retain a record of the near surface to deep crustal processes that operate during subduction to collision and provide information on the interaction between plate tectonics and surface responses through time. Here, we document the depositional-todeformational life cycle of a Paleoproterozoic foreland succession from the North China Craton. The succession was deposited in a foreland basin following ca. 2.50–2.47 Ga Altaid-style arc–microcontinent collision, and then converted to a fold-and-thrust belt at ca. 2.0–1.8 Ga due to Himalayan-style continent–continent collision. These two periods correspond to the assembly of supercratons in the late Archean and of the Paleoproterozoic supercontinent Columbia, respectively, which suggests that similar basins may have been common at the periphery of other cratons. The multiple stages of orogenesis and accompanying tectonic denudation and silicate weathering, as recorded by orogenic foreland basins, likely contributed to substantial changes in the hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere known to have occurred during the Paleoproterozoic.
Original source：Huang B, Liu, M., Kusky, T.M., Johnson, T.E., Wilde, S.A., Fu, D., Deng, H., Qian, Q.Y. Changes in orogenic style and surface environment recorded in Paleoproterozoic foreland successions. Nature Communications. 2023; 14: 7997. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43893-w.
