PAN lang=EN-US style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-font-kerning: 0pt">The paper reviewed the history and progress of research in accretionary orogenesis, and considered the accretionary orogenesis an important way of continental accretion throughout the entire earth history. The authors supposed that the formation and evolution of orogenic belt could be explained by the evolution of composite arc-basin systems in the active continental margins, and the formation of super orogenic system was closely related to the composite arc-basin systems formed on one or two sides of an ocean, which were controlled by the subduction of long-lived oceanic lithosphere. According to the ideas of composite arc-basin systems, a new model for the evolution of Tethyan ocean has been proposed, that the Gangdese belt had been controlled by the subduction of the Tethyan oceanic lithosphere since the Carboniferous, then an accretionary orogeny toward the ocean took place since the Triassic, and finally the Tethyan ocean vanished at the end of the Early Cretaceous.
