Evolved Late Mesozoic continental arc: Constraints of detrital zircons from the western East China Sea

The Late Mesozoic subduction of Izanagi slab beneath East Asia formed large-scale intraplate magmatism in SE South China and subduction mélanges outcropped in SW Japan to eastern Taiwan Island, but the accompanying arc remains uncertain. We conducted LA-ICP-MS U–Pb zircon dating and trace element analyses of proximal sandstones from the SW East China Sea to trace a Jurassic to Cretaceous magmatic arc. Newly acquired data reveal that arc magmatism mostly developed in episodes of 150–124 and 124–102 Ma, exhibiting characteristics of low-<i>T</i>, high Th/U, U/Yb, Sc/Yb, Th/Nb, and low Nb/Yb, Nb/Hf ratios. This magmatic arc, combined with the SE South China intraplate and residual subduction mélanges, spatially forms a Late Mesozoic trench–arc–intraplate architecture responding to the Izanagi subduction. Its identified tectonic scenarios mainly include slab strike-slip subduction (200–170 Ma), slab stagnation and intraplate foundering (170–150 Ma), slab rollback and arc-root removal (150–102 Ma), and arc migration (102–86 Ma). Both the western East China Sea and Cathaysia block share a unified Paleoproterozoic basement that formed at ca. 1.85 Ga, and the Cathaysia-based magmatic arc occurred then.