Provenance of sediments in western Foothills and Hsuehshan Range (Taiwan): A new view based on the EMP monazite versus LA-ICPMS zircon geochronology of detrital grains

© 2018 Elsevier B.V. The provenance of sediments in western Taiwan has been the subject of debate in recent years. Previous investigators, solely based on the U-Pb zircon geochronology for the detrital grains, all advocated the important roles, but with varying emphasis, of drainage systems in the South China Block. Influence of the Changjiang (Yangtze) River from the far-source Yangtze block versus nearby systems like Zhujiang, Minjiang and Jiulongjiang Rivers in the Cathaysia block has been the main issue. However, the fundamental question of whether the provenance is really the South China Block has never been evaluated. Here we report both the U-Pb zircon and Electron MicroProbe (EMP) monazite age data for seven sediment samples from two sides of the Taiwan Strait and synthesize the published data for all these rivers and sedimentary strata in western Taiwan to tackle this problem. The lack of, or insufficient, ~1.8 Ga monazites in the sediments of river mouths for all drainage systems in the South China Block makes them unlikely to be the source of Miocene sediments in western Taiwan where ~1.8 Ga monazite grains occupy 14.5–33.3% of the total age population. With reference to the tectonic evolution of the coastal southeast China-Taiwan region during Early Cretaceous to recent time, we propose a new explanation that invokes a now-concealed microcontinent along the Manila Trench. This microcontinent, probably related to a Paleoproterozoic orogen in Gondwana, eventually collided with the South China Block causing uplift of the easternmost structural element—the Pingtan-Dongshan Metamorphic Belt (PDMB) at ca. 130–120 Ma. It then drifted away sometime after 100 Ma and split into two parts with one becoming today's Palawan-Mindoro terrain of the Philippines. As indicated by the geophysical data near southern Taiwan, the remainder of this split microcontinent had subducted underneath the Philippine Sea plate along Manila Trench as a result of the opening of the South China Sea at ~33 Ma. Both the Peikang and Kuanyin basement highs in the offshore western Taiwan represent the unsubducted remnants of this microcontinent and also the major suppliers of Late Oligocene-Miocene sediments in western Taiwan. On the other hand, the Eocene-Early Oligocene strata of the Hsuehshan Range in central Taiwan show both zircon and monazite age patterns resembling the Eocene-Early Oligocene and recent sediments of the Zhujiang drainage system, indicating the southwestern origin of the protolith Taiwan. This scenario also matches the recent proposition that part of the Central Range belongs to the deep-level accretionary prism of a Miocene subduction system.