The role of strike-slip faulting in the history of the Hukawng Block and the Jade Mines Uplift, Myanmar

Abstract

© 2019 The Geologists' Association The Hukawng Basin is bounded on its east by splays of the still-active Sagaing Fault. Palinspastically restoring Myanmar's blocks to their positions before the widely-accepted c.400 km dextral strike-slip fault displacement, places the Hukawng Block alongside the Tengchong Block, suggesting they were formerly connected. Additionally the Cretaceous–Paleogene Medial-Myanmar Shear Zone then aligns with the NW-SE Jade Mines Belt. Jadeitite formed there under HP/LT conditions in a Mesozoic subduction zone. It was exhumed at the intersection of the dextral Medial-Myanmar Shear Zone with the subduction-zone at the continental margin of Sundaland. The later Sagaing Fault played no part in that exhumation.