Alpine-style nappes thrust over ancient North
China continental margin demonstrate large
Archean horizontal plate motions
Yating Zhong
1
, Timothy Kusky
1,2,4
✉
, Lu Wang
1,4
✉
, Ali Polat
1,3
, Xuanyu Liu
1,5
, Yaying Peng
1,5
,
Zhikang Luan
1,5
, Chuanhai Wang
1,5
, Junpeng Wang
1
& Hao Deng
1
Whether modern-style plate tectonics operated on early Earth is debated due to a paucity of
de
fifi
nitive records of large-scale plate convergence, subduction, and collision in the Archean
geological record. Archean Alpine-style sub-horizontal fold/thrust nappes in the Precambrian
basement of China contain a Mariana-type subduction-initiation sequence of mid-ocean ridge
basalt blocks in a 1600-kilometer-long mélange belt, overthrusting picritic-boninitic and
island-arc tholeiite bearing nappes, in turn emplaced over a passive margin capping an
ancient Archean continental fragment. Picrite-boninite and tholeiite units are 2698 ± 30
million years old marking the age of subduction initiation, with nappes emplaced over the
passive margin at 2520 million years ago. Here, we show the life cycle of the subduction zone
and ocean spanned circa 178 million years; conservative plate velocities of 2 centimeters per
year yield a lateral transport distance of subducted oceanic crust of 3560 kilometers, pro
viding direct positive evidence for horizontal plate tectonics in the Archean.
1
State Key Lab for Geological Processes and Mineral Resources, and Center for Global Tectonics, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences,
Wuhan 430074, China.
2
Three Gorges Research Center for Geohazards, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China.
3
School of the Environment,
University of Windsor, Windsor, ON N9B 3P4, Canada.
4
These authors jointly supervised this work: Timothy Kusky, Lu Wang.
5
These authors contributed
equally: Xuanyu Liu, Yaying Peng, Zhikang Luan, Chuanhai Wang.
✉
email:
tkusky@gmail.com
;
wanglu@cug.edu.cn
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
| (2021) 12:6172 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26474-7 | www.nature.com/naturecommunications
