Nature and demise of the Proto-South China Sea
DescriptionBulletin of the Geological Society of Malaysia, Volume 63, June 2017, pp. 61 – 76 Nature and demise of the Proto-South China SeaRobert Hall* & H. Tim BreitfeldSE Asia Research Group, Department of Earth Sciences, Abstract: The term Proto-South China Sea has been used in a number of different ways. It was originally introduced to describe oceanic crust that formerly occupied the region north of Borneo where the modern South China Sea is situated. This oceanic crust was inferred to have been Mesozoic, and to have been eliminated by subduction beneath Borneo. Subduction was interpreted to have begun in Early Cenozoic and terminated in the Miocene. Subsequently the term was also used for inferred oceanic crust, now disappeared, of quite different age, notably that interpreted to have been subducted during the Late Cretaceous below Sarawak. More recently, some authors have considered that southeast-directed subduction continued until much later in the Neogene than originally proposed, based on the supposition that the NW Borneo Trough and Palawan Trough are, or were recently, sites of subduction. Others have challenged the existence of the Proto-South China Sea completely, or suggested it was much smaller than envisaged when the term was introduced. Keywords: Subduction, Borneo, Sabah, Sarawak, tomography https://doi.org/10.7186/bgsm63201703
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