The world setting of the Himalaya during the late Paleozoic and Mesozoic

• Main Author: Waterhouse, J. B.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Balkema; International Lithosphere Programme, Publication 197 1992
• Subjects: 1900 Earth and Planetary Sciences; 2300 Environmental Science; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; New Zealand; Pacific; Novaya Zemlya; Taimyr
• Online Access: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:718562

The megacomplex of Permian orogens, with uplands, volcanic arcs, basins and subsidiary crustal flakes is broadly outlined from the Himalaya and Tibet through southern China, Burma and Thailand-Malaysia, to Indonesia and New Guinea and the southeast Pacific realm of eastern Australia, New Caledonia and New Zealand. Few simple and persistent lineaments are apparent but some bands, now disrupted by subsequent tectogenesis, carry a characteristic signature for thousands of kilometers. Overall, it appears that the Himalaya geology was complex, and several seaways developed, possibly through the Indus-Yarlung-Zangbo and Bangon-Nujiang sutures, and also through the Kun Lun, with depocentres to the north through paleotropical Ferghana-Tien Shan, and Taimyr-Novaya Zemlya, south of the Arctic Ocean. The trends and changes in the Earth's crust between and over the margins of Gondwanaland and Laurasia point to the persistence of deep lineaments in the Earth's lithosphere and mantle, that slowly changed in position and orientation through time, developing and closing branches, to have a profound and long-lasting effect on volcanicity, igneous intrusions, sedimentation, deformation and erosion. -from Author