Tectonic history of East Asia and the Asiana hypothesis
Abstract
When almost all continents were assembled in the late Paleozoic supercontinent Pangea, East Asian continental blocks existed as distinct, separate entities. Ocean closures and stepwise assembly of these blocks into larger continents were the main paleogeographic changes to influence paleoclimate and biogeography during Pangea time. In this Perspective, we review how Triassic assembly of the East Asian blocks formed the only major continent, the size of South America, that was never part of Pangea: we name this continent Asiana. To quantify its paleogeography, we computed site-level based paleolatitude paths based on an up-to-date paleomagnetic database. Asiana formed in the Northern Hemisphere (sub)tropics, bounded in the south by the Mesotethys and in the north and west by the Mongol-Okhotsk-Waser ocean. Asiana then traveled 2000-3000 km towards 'Eurussia' in the early Cretaceous, forming Eurasia. Puzzlingly, absence of a widespread geological record of intracontinental shortening suggests that this convergence closed the Mongol-Okhotsk-Waser ocean at a sparsely identified suture, yet Asiana dinosaurs suggest that transient Triassic and Jurassic land bridges must have existed: their locations remain unconstrained. Subduction remains of Asiana’s assembly and evolution are seismically imaged as the deep-mantle 'slab graveyard' below Asia. The Asiana hypothesis affects paleoceanography and paleoclimate, biogeography, and geodynamics, and requires field mapping to unravel its approach to and collision with Eurussia.
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BibTeX
@misc{hinsbergen2026tectonic,
title = {{Tectonic history of East Asia and the Asiana hypothesis}},
author = {Douwe J.J. van Hinsbergen and Shihu Li and Zhenyu Li and Bram Vaes and Peter Lippert and Ruiyang Chai and Bitian Wei and Teng Wang and Grant Rea-Downing and Douwe G. van der Meer and Alexis Licht and Nalan Lom and Pietro Sternai and Yanan Zhou and Chenglong Deng and Bo Wan and Wim Spakman and Ding Lin},
howpublished = {EarthArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.31223/x5sn6c},
url = {https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/15426/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Tectonic history of East Asia and the Asiana hypothesis
AU - Douwe J.J. van Hinsbergen
AU - Shihu Li
AU - Zhenyu Li
AU - Bram Vaes
AU - Peter Lippert
AU - Ruiyang Chai
AU - Bitian Wei
AU - Teng Wang
AU - Grant Rea-Downing
AU - Douwe G. van der Meer
AU - Alexis Licht
AU - Nalan Lom
AU - Pietro Sternai
AU - Yanan Zhou
AU - Chenglong Deng
AU - Bo Wan
AU - Wim Spakman
AU - Ding Lin
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/09
PB - EarthArXiv
DO - 10.31223/x5sn6c
UR - https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/15426/
AB - When almost all continents were assembled in the late Paleozoic supercontinent Pangea, East Asian continental blocks existed as distinct, separate entities. Ocean closures and stepwise assembly of these blocks into larger continents were the main paleogeographic changes to influence paleoclimate and biogeography during Pangea time. In this Perspective, we review how Triassic assembly of the East Asian blocks formed the only major continent, the size of South America, that was never part of Pangea: we name this continent Asiana. To quantify its paleogeography, we computed site-level based paleolatitude paths based on an up-to-date paleomagnetic database. Asiana formed in the Northern Hemisphere (sub)tropics, bounded in the south by the Mesotethys and in the north and west by the Mongol-Okhotsk-Waser ocean. Asiana then traveled 2000-3000 km towards 'Eurussia' in the early Cretaceous, forming Eurasia. Puzzlingly, absence of a widespread geological record of intracontinental shortening suggests that this convergence closed the Mongol-Okhotsk-Waser ocean at a sparsely identified suture, yet Asiana dinosaurs suggest that transient Triassic and Jurassic land bridges must have existed: their locations remain unconstrained. Subduction remains of Asiana’s assembly and evolution are seismically imaged as the deep-mantle 'slab graveyard' below Asia. The Asiana hypothesis affects paleoceanography and paleoclimate, biogeography, and geodynamics, and requires field mapping to unravel its approach to and collision with Eurussia.
ER -