Xenocrystic/inherited Precambrian zircons entrained within igneous rocks from eastern South China: Tracking unexposed ancient crust and implications for late Paleoproterozoic orogenesis

South China is characterized by widespread igneous rocks with varied ages and nature in its eastern part, which contain abundant Precambrian xenocrystic/inherited zircons that bear important information of the composition and evolution of the underlying ancient crust. This paper for the first time presents a compiled U-Pb age database of 1416 Precambrian xenocrystic/inherited zircons from igneous rocks in eastern South China, and attempts to provide a constraint on the Precambrian crustal evolution of the constituent Yangtze and Cathaysia blocks. These xenocrystic/inherited zircons, as a conceivable proxy of the unexposed continental crust, document three major tectonothermal events related to continental accretion and subsequent modification that possibly built the continental crust of the eastern Yangtze Block (EYB) at 2.70–2.40 Ga, 2.10–1.55 Ga, and 0.95–0.70 Ga, and the Cathaysia Block (CAB) at 2.70–2.40 Ga, 2.05–1.75 Ga, and 1.10–0.70 Ga, pointing to a complex Precambrian evolutionary history for South China. The EYB zircons are unexpectedly dominated by a 2.10–1.55 Ga age population that shows a multimodal distribution with peaks at 2.05 Ga, 2.0 Ga, 1.90 Ga, 1.85 Ga, and 1.58 Ga, and the CAB zircons are characterized by a unimodal 2.0–1.75 Ga age population that conspicuously peaked at 1.85 Ga, both of which overlap with the tenure of the Nuna supercontinent. These xenocrystic/inherited zircons from both blocks generally have negative ε Hf (t) values, which in combination with coeval regional magmatic and metamorphic records can assist to trace a possible prolonged (2.05–1.75 Ga) orogenic process in the EYB and a short-lived (1.9–1.8 Ga) orogeny in the CAB. Such orogeneses are proposed to be correlated with the assembly of the Nuna supercontinent.