Tertiary strike-slip faulting in southeastern Mongolia and implications for Asian tectonics

Geologic maps have long portrayed the Late Cretaceous-Recent geologic history of southeastern Mongolia as tectonically quiescent. We present new data based on outcrop observations that indicate the northeast-trending East Gobi fault zone (EGFZ) was reactivated in the Cenozoic as a sinistral strike-slip fault system. Inversions of Cenozoic fault-slip data imply that faulting was associated with north-northwest subhorizontal shortening and east-northeast subhorizontal extension. We propose that faulting is Tertiary in age based on published interpretations of seismic reflection data which reveal that the mid-Cretaceous (∼100-95 Ma) unconformity is deformed by strike-slip faults, and based on field observation of strike-slip faults and fracture sets that cut Upper Cretaceous and Cenozoic strata but lack evidence for neotectonic activity. Published seismicity maps also appear to argue against significant Quaternary faulting within the EGFZ. These new data may lend credence to published models proposing a Middle Miocene or older kinematic linkage between the EGFZ and the Altyn Tagh fault in China. The recognition that the EGFZ has a history of left-lateral displacement in both the Early Mesozoic and Cenozoic means that currently available estimates of offset based on displaced Paleozoic rocks constrain total offset only. This reactivation history supports the notion that inherited lithospheric structures are important in controlling the location and, thus, modes of intracontinental deformation in Asia as a function of collisional far field effects and evolving boundary conditions of the Pacific margin.