Intraplate deformation

Figure 1: East Asia topographic map. The large brown area is the Tibetan plateau and the Tien Shan mountains to the northwest. Almost the whole central landmass in view is deformed from the collision of India into Asia around 50 million years ago.

Intraplate deformation is the folding, breaking, or flow of the Earth's crust within plates instead of at their margins. This process usually occurs in areas with especially weak crust and upper mantle, such as the Tibetan Plateau (Figure 1). Intraplate deformation brings another aspect to plate tectonic theory.