| Abstract: | The Longmen Mountains and adjacent regions on the eastern margin of the Tibetan plateau can be divided into three tectonic units: the eastern Songpan—Garzê fold belt, the Longmen Mountains (Longmen Shan) Thrust—Nappe belt and the Western Sichuan foreland basin that occupies the western part of the Sichuan basin. The Longmen Shan Thrust—Nappe belt is subdivided by six northwest\|dipping major listric thrusts, with accompanying duplexes and imbricate fans, into five large\|scale nappes (Chen & Wilson, 1996). In the inner Longmen Shan, the nappe units have incorporated both Mesoproterozoic basement and Sinian (Neoproterozoic) to Triassic cover sequences as “thick\|skinned" horses. Whereas, in the frontal Longmen Shan, Sinian to Cretaceous cover sediments have been stripped from the basement as “thin\|skinned" fold and thrust sheets, including extensively distributed klippen structures. Pre\|thrusting extension during Devonian to middle Late Triassic times resulted in syndepositional normal faults. Structural inversion of these faults initiated the “Peng Xian—Guan Xian basement complex", Jiuding Shan and Tangwangzhai nappes, during an early episode of the Indosinian Orogeny (Norian to Rhaetian). This was followed by episodic thrusting during latest Triassic to Early Cretaceous times to develop the Guan Xian—An Xian and Southeastern Marginal nappes that have incorporated sediments from the neighbouring foreland basin into the frontal part of the Thrust—Nappe belt. Differential thrusting occurred across the Thrust—Nappe belt during a Late Miocene reactivation of the pre\|existing faults. |
