Speculations on the formation of cratons and cratonic basins

- How do cratonic basins form?
- Their slow subsidence suggests by lithospheric cooling.
- Thick lithosphere cannot be heated by extension.
- Shortening can heat thick lithosphere.
- Erosion then leads to cooling and subsidence.

Surface wave tomography using Rayleigh waves has shown that Tibet and the surrounding mountain ranges that are now being shortened are underlain by thick lithosphere, of similar thickness to that beneath cratons. Both their elevation and lithospheric thickness can result from pure shear shortening of normal thickness continental lithosphere by about a factor of two. The resulting thermal evolution of the crust and lithosphere is dominated by radioactive decay in the crust. It raises the temperature of the lower part of the crust and of the upper part of the lithosphere to above their solidus temperatures, generating granites and small volumes of mafic alkaline rocks from beneath the Moho, as well as generating high temperature metamorphic assemblages in the crust. Thermal models of this process show that it can match the P, T estimates determined from metamorphic xenoliths from Tibet and the Pamirs, and can also match the compositions of the alkaline rocks. The seismological properties of the upper part of the lithosphere beneath northern Tibet suggest that it has already been heated by the blanketing effect and radioactivity of the thick crust on top. If the crustal thickness is reduced by erosion alone to its normal value at low elevations, without any tectonic extension, over a time scale that is short compared to the thermal time constant of thick lithosphere, of ∼250 Ma, thermal subsidence will produce a basin underlain by thick lithosphere. Though this simple model accounts for the relevant observations, there is not yet sufficient information available to be able to model in detail the resulting thermal evolution of the sediments deposited in such cratonic basins.