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Part of the book series: Society of Earth Scientists Series ((SESS))

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Abstract

The South China Sea offers a special site for studying continental break-up, sedimentary basin formation, mantle and lithosphere evolution and other land-ocean interactions because of its location and its well-preserved evolutionary records. It behaves as a natural laboratory for understanding of different plate boundaries in a small region. The SCS has got important attention for its international marine transportation and navigation, its rich marine biodiversity and rich oil and gas resources. As the largest marginal sea separating Asia, the largest continent from Pacific, the largest ocean, the SCS plays a key role in land-sea interactions of the Earth system. From the tectonics perspective, there have been several controversies and challenges for understanding the tectonics and evolution of the South China Sea. Here, we present a brief overview on the evolution and formation of the South China Sea.

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Acknowledgements

This short article is based on the available literatures. We thank the director of NCPOR, Goa. The authors gratefully acknowledge all authors of the research articles which have been referred to compile this article.

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Correspondence to Lachit S. Ningthoujam .

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Ningthoujam, L.S., Pandey, D.K. (2020). A Summary of the South China Sea Evolution. In: Pandey, D., Ravichandran, M., Nair, N. (eds) Dynamics of the Earth System: Evolution, Processes and Interactions. Society of Earth Scientists Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40659-2_11

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