Northwest Pacific-Izanagi plate tectonics since Cretaceous times from western Pacific mantle structure

Northwest Pacific-Izanagi subduction histories along Eurasia are poorly constrained due to extensive subduction, which partially consumed the western Pacific plate and entire Izanagi plate, its hypothesized conjugate margin. Here we reconstruct NW tectonics since Cretaceous times by mapping structurally restoring (i.e. unfolding) subducted slabs from regional global tomography, re-creating vanished as rift flank. Unfolding of based on their cross-sectional areas, corrected for ‘tomographic smearing’, reveals that 2230 5000 km was between Kamchatka southern Marianas. We add our restored plates a model reveal under after mid-Cretaceous limited present Bohai Bay-Yellow Sea, China, northern Russia. The limit NW-SE sinistral transform intersected near Qingdao, segmented eastern continental magmatism during late Cretaceous; call this ‘Qingdao line’. low-angle Izanagi-Pacific ridge-trench intersection with at ?50 ± 10 Ma Sea motion change initiated Qingdao line transform, forming Izu-Bonin-Marianas arcs reorganizing faults. show tomographic geodynamic modeling evidence 4000 km-long, laterally-continuous, NE-SW trending, seismically-slow ‘slab gap’ 1000 250 depth Sakhalin central China is signature ridge.