Indus-Yarlung suture zone explained

The Indus-Yarlung suture zone or the Indus-Yarlung Tsangpo suture is a tectonic suture in southern Tibet and across the north margin of the Himalayas which resulted from the collision between the Indian plate and the Eurasian plate starting about 52 Ma.[1] The north side of the suture zone is the Ladakh Batholith of the Karakoram-Lhasa Block. The rocks of the suture zone consist of an ophiolite mélanges composed of Neotethys oceanic crustal flyschs and ophiolites; the Dras Volcanics: which are basalts, dacites and minor radiolarian cherts – the remains of a mid- to late Mesozoic volcanic island arc; and the Indus Molasse which are an Eocene or later continental clastic sediments.[2]

Some think that the many ophiolites that define the suture are not remnants of a very big ocean, but of a small back-arc basin structure.[3] More recently it has been suggested that these ophiolites formed during EarlyCretaceous subduction initiation (Hu and Stern, 2020). You can watch a video about this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Xojnf9sYA

References

Hu, H., and Stern, R. J., 2020. Early Cretaceous Subduction Initiation in Southern Tibet Caused the Northward Flight of India. Geoscience Frontiers 11, 1123-1131.

Notes and References

  1. Age of Initiation of the India-Asia Collision http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rowley/Rowley/Collision_Age.html
  2. Dèzes, Pierre, 1999, Major tectonic subdivisions of the Himalaya Web site: Chapter2: Major Tectonic Subdivisions of the Himalaya . 2010-02-24 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20100106105812/http://comp1.geol.unibas.ch/~zanskar/CHAPITRE2/page24.html . 2010-01-06 .
  3. Bédard . É. . Hébert . R. . Guilmette . C. . Lesage . G. . Wang . C.S. . Dostal . J. . 2009 . Petrology and geochemistry of the Saga and Sangsang ophiolitic massifs, Yarlung Zangbo Suture Zone, Southern Tibet: Evidence for an arc–back-arc origin . . 113 . 1–2. 48–67 . 10.1016/j.lithos.2009.01.011 . 2009Litho.113...48B .