Birth and demise of the Bangong-Nujiang Tethyan Ocean: A review from the Gerze area of central Tibet

Reconstructing the evolution of the Bangong-Nujiang Tethyan Ocean (BNTO) plays an indispensable role in understanding the linkage between Gondwana dispersion and Tibetan Plateau accretion. The existence of the BNTO is inferred from presence of dismembered ophiolite bodies along the Bangong-Nujiang suture zone, which separates Lhasa from Qiangtang. In this paper, we present a detailed synthesis of ophiolite, metamorphism, magmatism,...