Tectonic setting of Western Pacific marginal basins

Global kinematics as well as magnetic anomalies of marginal basins, with continental geology and paleomagnetic data as additional constraints, are used to present a set of reconstructions of the Western Pacific marginal basins between 56 Ma and the Present at key periods (56, 43, 32, 20, 12 and 3 Ma). Our model accounts for the rapid motion of "exotic terranes" along the whole of the Western Pacific convergent zone. Marginal basins appear to open in a great variety of tectonic settings, the two extreme examples being the Mariana trough where trench suction may be the predominant driving force and the South China Sea where intracontinental deformation appears to be the major mechanism. The study of marginal basins is a 3-D problem which must take into account the whole tectonic context (subduction related tectonics in cross-section and upper plate deformation in map view) and not only a 2-D problem (the classical trench-arc-back-arc problem).