Evolution of the southern Taiwan-Sinzi Folded Zone and opening of the southern Okinawa trough

Recent interpretation of seismic sections and free-air gravity anomalies in offshore northern Taiwan reveals that the southern Taiwan-Sinzi Folded Zone began to form in late Middle Miocene, though it was mainly constructed in the Late Pliocene with strong reverse faulting and folding. Two westward progradational sequences were deposited in the shelf basin with sediments supplied from the southern Taiwan-Sinzi Folded Zone and the southern Ryukyu Arc. These two structures are displaced by several northwest-striking dextral strike-slip faults that were active in the early Quaternary when the clockwise-rotated southern Ryukyu Arc and the folded southern Taiwan-Sinzi Folded Zone were broken. It is believed that recent extension in the southern Okinawa Trough started in the early Quaternary because uplift on the southern Taiwan-Sinzi Folded Zone continued to latest Pliocene-early Quaternary. Paleogene-Miocene sediments of the East China Sea Shelf in the western part of the southern Okinawa Trough Basin are interpreted to indicate that the East China Sea Shelf Basin extended to the east of the southern Taiwan-Sinzi Folded Zone. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.