Sedimentary fill history of the Huicheng Basin in the West Qinling Mountains and associated constraints on Mesozoic intracontinental tectonic evolution

The Qinling Orogenic Belt is divided commonly by the Fengxian-Taibai strike-slip shear zone and the Huicheng Basin into the East and West Qinling mountains, which show significant geological differences after the Indosinian orogeny. The Fengxian-Taibai fault zone and the Meso-Cenozoic Huicheng Basin, situated at the boundary of the East and West Qinling, provide a natural laboratory for tectonic analysis and sedimentological study of intracontinental tectonic evolution of the Qinling Orogenic Belt. In order to explain the dynamic development of the Huicheng Basin and elucidate its post-orogenic tectonic evolution at the junction of the East and West Qinling, we studied the geometry and kinematics of fault zones between the blocks of West Qinling, as well as the sedimentary fill history of the Huicheng Basin. First, we found that after the collisional orogeny in the Late Triassic, post-orogenic extensional collapse occurred in the Early and Middle Jurassic within the Qinling Orogenic Belt, resulting in a series of rift basins. Second, in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, a NE-SW compressive stress field caused large-scale sinistral strike-slip faults in the Qinling Orogenic Belt, causing intracontinental escape tectonics at the junction of the East and West Qinling, including eastward finite escape of the East Qinling micro-plate and southwest lateral escape of the Bikou Terrane. Meanwhile, the strike-slip-related Early Cretaceous sedimentary basin was formed with a right-order echelon arrangement in sinistral shear zones along the southern margin of the Huicheng fault. Overall during the Mesozoic, the Huicheng Basin and surrounding areas experienced four tectonic evolutionary stages, including extensional rift basin development in the Early and Middle Jurassic, intense compressive uplift in the Late Jurassic, formation of a strike-slip extensional basin in the Early Cretaceous, and compressive uplift in the Late Cretaceous.