Cenozoic lithospheric evolution of the Bohai Bay Basin, eastern North China Craton: Constraint from tectono-thermal modeling

It is well established that the lithosphere beneath the eastern North China Craton (NCC) had been thinned before the Cenozoic. A 2D multi-phase extension model, in which the initial crustal and lithospheric thicknesses are variable, is presented to reconstruct the initial thicknesses of the crust and lithosphere in the early Cenozoic and to further investigate the lithospheric evolution beneath the eastern NCC through the Cenozoic. We conduct thermal modeling along three profiles from east to west in the Bohai Bay Basin, which is the center of the lithospheric destruction and thinning of the NCC. Using multiple constraints, such as tectonic subsidence, the present-day heat flow and the Moho depth, we determine the initial crustal and lithospheric thicknesses of the Bohai Bay Basin before the Cenozoic rift to be 33-36 km and 80-105 km, respectively. The model results show that the most rapid lithospheric thinning during the Cenozoic occurred in the middle Eocene for most depressions, and the thinning activity ceased at the end of the Oligocene, reaching a minimum lithospheric thickness of 53-74 km, followed by a thermal relaxation phase. Combined with previous studies, we infer that the lithosphere beneath the eastern NCC experienced two stages of alternating thinning and thickening: notable thinning in the Early Cretaceous and Paleogene, and thickening in the Late Cretaceous and late Cenozoic. We believe that thermo-chemical erosion, together with extension, was probably the major mechanism of the significant lithospheric removal during the Mesozoic, whereas the Cenozoic lithospheric thinning was mainly dominated by tectonic extension in the eastern NCC; lithospheric thickening was generally a result of thermal cooling.