The Yangtze plate, also called the South China block or the South China subplate, comprises the bulk of southern

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

. It is separated on the east from the Okinawa plate by a rift that forms the

Okinawa Trough The (also called , literally "China-Ryukyu Border Trough") is a seabed feature of the East China Sea. It is an active, initial back-arc rifting basin which has formed behind the Ryukyu arc-trench system in the West Pacific. It developed where th ...

which is a

back-arc basin A back-arc basin is a type of geologic Structural basin, basin, found at some convergent boundary, convergent plate boundaries. Presently all back-arc basins are submarine features associated with island arcs and subduction zones, with many found ...

, on the south by the Sunda plate and the

Philippine Sea plate The Philippine Sea plate or the Philippine plate is a tectonic plate comprising oceanic lithosphere that lies beneath the Philippine Sea, to the east of the Philippines. Most segments of the Philippines, including northern Luzon, are part of ...

, and on the north and west by the Eurasian plate. The Longmenshan Fault on the latter border was the site of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. The Yangtze plate was formed by the disaggregation of the

Rodinia Rodinia (from the Russian родина, ''rodina'', meaning "motherland, birthplace") was a Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.26–0.90 billion years ago (Ga) and broke up 750–633 million years ago (Ma). wer ...

supercontinent In geology, a supercontinent is the assembly of most or all of Earth's continent, continental blocks or cratons to form a single large landmass. However, some geologists use a different definition, "a grouping of formerly dispersed continents", ...

750 million years ago, in the

Neoproterozoic The Neoproterozoic Era is the last of the three geologic eras of the Proterozoic geologic eon, eon, spanning from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago, and is the last era of the Precambrian "supereon". It is preceded by the Mesoproterozoic era an ...

era An era is a span of time. Era or ERA may also refer to: * Era (geology), a subdivision of geologic time * Calendar era Education * Academy of European Law (German: '), an international law school * ERA School, in Melbourne, Australia * E ...

. South China rifted away from the

Gondwana Gondwana ( ; ) was a large landmass, sometimes referred to as a supercontinent. The remnants of Gondwana make up around two-thirds of today's continental area, including South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia (continent), Australia, Zea ...

supercontinent in the

Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 23.5 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the third and shortest period of t ...

. During the formation of the great supercontinent

Pangaea Pangaea or Pangea ( ) was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous period approximately 335 mi ...

, South China was a smaller, separate continent located off the east coast of the supercontinent and drifting northward. In the

Triassic The Triassic ( ; sometimes symbolized 🝈) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.5 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.4 Mya. The Triassic is t ...

, the Yangtze plate collided with the North China plate, thereby connecting with Pangaea, and formed the

Sichuan basin The Sichuan Basin (), formerly transliterated as the Szechwan Basin, sometimes called the Red Basin, is a lowland region in southwestern China. It is surrounded by mountains on all sides and is drained by the upper Yangtze River and its tributar ...

. In the Cenozoic, the Yangtze plate was influenced by the collision of the

Indian plate The Indian plate (or India plate) is or was a minor tectonic plate straddling the equator in the Eastern Hemisphere. Originally a part of the ancient continent of Gondwana, the Indian plate broke away from the other fragments of Gondwana an ...

and Eurasian plate creating the uplifting of the

Longmen Mountains The Longmen Mountains (), also tautologically referred to in English-language publications as the Longmenshan Mountains, are a mountain range in Sichuan province in southwestern China. Geography The range runs in a roughly northeast to southwest ...

. Its southward motion is accommodated along the Red River fault.

References

Sources * Tectonic plates Geology of China Geology of the Pacific Ocean {{tectonics-stub