Structural Characteristics and Formation Dynamics： A Review of the Main Sedimentary Basins in the Continent of China

The formation and evolution of basins in the China continent are closely related to the collages of many blocks and orogenic belts. Based on a large amount of the geological, geophysical, petroleum exploration data and a large number of published research results, the basement constitutions and evolutions of tectonic–sedimentary of sedimentary basins, the main border fault belts and the orogenesis of their peripheries of the basins are analyzed. Especially, the main typical basins in the eight divisions in the continent of China are analyzed in detail, including the Tarim, Ordos, Sichuan, Songliao, Bohai Bay, Junggar, Qiadam and Qiangtang basins. The main five stages of superimposed evolutions processes of basins revealed, which accompanied with the tectonic processes of the Paleo–Asian Ocean, Tethyan and Western Pacific domains. They contained the formations of main Cratons(1850–800 Ma), developments of marine basins(800–386 Ma), developments of Marine–continental transition basins and super mantle plumes(386–252 Ma), amalgamation of China Continent and developments of continental basins(252–205 Ma) and development of the foreland basins in the western and extensional faulted basin in the eastern of China(205–0 Ma). Therefore, large scale marine sedimentary basins existed in the relatively stable continental blocks of the Proterozoic, developed during the Neoproterozoic to Paleozoic, with the property of the intracontinental cratons and peripheral foreland basins, the multistage superimposing and late reformations of basins. The continental basins developed on the weak or preexisting divisional basements, or the remnant and reformed marine basins in the Meso–Cenozoic, are mainly the continental margins, back–arc basins, retroarc foreland basins, intracontinental rifts and pull–apart basins. The styles and intensity deformation containing the faults, folds and the structural architecture of regional unconformities of the basins, responded to the openings, subductions, closures of oceans, the