Correlation of geological complexes of the Khan-Tengri Mountain massif

Alexander Mikolaichuk , Farid Apayarov, Dmitry Gordeev

Researchers of the border regions of Xinjiang and the Central Asian countries are actively discussing two alternative models for the relationships between the main structural units of the Tianshan mountains. Most researchers believe that the Kyrgyz Middle Tianshan wedges out to the east along the Atbashi-Inylchek-Nalati marginal fault. According to the second hypothesis, the structures of the Middle Tianshan continue within the range Nalati where they are described as Chinese Central Tianshan. Comparing the characteristics of the Paleozoic and Proterozoic sedimentary, volcanogenic, intrusive, and metamorphic formations of these regions leads us to the conclusion that the structural units of the Kyrgyz Middle and most of the Northern Tianshan, including the superimposed Middle-Late Paleozoic troughs, are not continued into China, but are successively cut along the echelon system of conjugated strike-slip faults, united by us into the Frontal Tianshan Dextral Strike-slip (FTDS). And only the northern segment of the Issyk-Kul massif can be considered as an analogue of the Chinese Central Tianshan, displaced along the FTDS to the northwest for a distance of at least 80 km. Therefore, adjacent geological complexes are eroded along the FTDS like the oblique boundaries of convergent lithospheric plates are tectonic eroded.