Triassic–Jurassic evolution of the eastern North China Craton: Insights from the Lushun-Dalian area, South Liaodong Peninsula, NE China

The Lushun-Dalian area of the South Liaodong Peninsula, in NE China, located in the SE margin of the North China Craton (NCC) exposes a suite of Middle-Late Proterozoic low-grade metamorphic sedimentary rocks which can be divided into a lower competent layer, a middle incompetent layer, and an upper competent layer on the basis of lithology and deformation style. Two stages of deformation recorded both in the metasedimentary rocks and a magmatic complex intruded in them indicate that the Lushun-Dalian area is a key region to decipher the Triassic–Jurassic tectonic evolution of the eastern NCC. The earliest D1 deformation mylonitized the magmatic complex and thrusted it northeastward over the low-grade metasedimentary rocks, in which a series of NE-verging folds and NE-directed brittle thrust faults developed. The D2 deformation erased the D1 fabrics in the incompetent layer by a top-to-the-NW ductile shearing and refolded the D1 fabrics in the lower and upper competent units, producing a series of km-scale SW-plunging folds. New zircon secondary ion mass spectrometry and laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry U-Pb ages from the magmatic complex and the granite porphyry dikes intruded in it, combined with the unconformity between the low-grade metasedimentary rocks and the Early Cretaceous volcanic rocks, indicate that D1 and D2 occurred after 211 Ma and before the Early Cretaceous. The decrease of the deformation intensity of D1 and D2 from the Lushun-Dalian area toward the interior of the NCC in the NE and NW directions suggests that D1 was the structural response in the overriding plate to the NCC-South China Block convergence during the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic, and D2 was the structural response to the northwestward subduction of the Paleo–Pacific plate beneath the NCC in the Middle-Late Jurassic. The superimposition of D2 on D1 recorded a significant tectonic transformation from the nearly E-W–trending Tethysian domain to the NE-SW–trending Pacific domain.