Major progresses of geological survey and research in East Tethys：An overview

The tectonic evolution of East Tethys, especially the tectonic evolution of Qinghai-Tibet Plaeau, has been one of the most important scientific issues in the world. In order to understand the tectonic evolution history of Eastern Tethys and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau more comprehensively and deeply, this article focuses on summarizing the current progresses of regional geological survey (1∶50 000) in recent years and giving an overview on previous achievements about Tethyan spatio-temporal evolution and evolutionary stages. A new point of view that the evolutionary processes were probably continuous from Proto-Tethys to Paleo-Tethys in the Changning-Lancang tectonic zone and from Paleo-Tethys to Neo-Tethys in the southern Gagdise tectonic zone has been put forword in the article. Furthermore, the spatio-temporal framework of archipelagic arc-basin system in continental margins and tectonic models have been constructed for the evolwtionary processes of the Proto-Tethys, Paleo-Tethys and Neo-Tethys of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and East Tethys tectonic domain have been established reasonably.