Lower Cretaceous Strata in the Lhasa Terrane, Tibet, with Implications for Understanding the Early Tectonic History of the Tibetan Plateau

2007 ◽  
Vol 77 (10) ◽  
pp. 809-825 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. L. Leier ◽  
P. G. DeCelles ◽  
P. Kapp ◽  
G. E. Gehrels
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Lower Cretaceous ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Lhasa Terrane ◽  
Tectonic History ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals Magnetostratigraphy of Tertiary sediments from the Hoh Xil Basin: implications for the Cenozoic tectonic history of the Tibetan Plateau

2003 ◽  
Vol 154 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhifei Liu ◽  
Xixi Zhao ◽  
Chengshan Wang ◽  
Shun Liu ◽  
Haisheng Yi
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Tectonic History ◽  
History Of

scholarly journals Evolutionary history of zoogeographical regions surrounding the Tibetan Plateau

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiekun He ◽  
Siliang Lin ◽  
Jiatang Li ◽  
Jiehua Yu ◽  
Haisheng Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Change Over Time ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Terrestrial Vertebrates ◽  
History Of ◽  
Striking Change ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThe Tibetan Plateau (TP) and surrounding regions have one of the most complex biotas on Earth. However, the evolutionary history of these regions in deep time is poorly understood. Here, we quantify the temporal changes in beta dissimilarities among zoogeographical regions during the Cenozoic using 4,966 extant terrestrial vertebrates and 1,278 extinct mammal genera. We identify ten present-day zoogeographical regions and find that they underwent a striking change over time. Specifically, the fauna on the TP was close to the Oriental realm in deep time but became more similar to the Palearctic realms more recently. The present-day zoogeographical regions generally emerged during the Miocene/Pliocene boundary (ca. 5 Ma). These results indicate that geological events such as the Indo-Asian Collision, the TP uplift, and the aridification of the Asian interior underpinned the evolutionary history of the zoogeographical regions surrounding the TP over different time periods.

scholarly journals Late Cenozoic Denudation and Topographic Evolution History of the Lhasa River Drainage in Southern Tibetan Plateau: Insights From Inverse Thermal History Modeling

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dongxu Cai ◽  
Xianyan Wang ◽  
Guangwei Li ◽  
Wenbin Zhu ◽  
Huayu Lu
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Surface Erosion ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Monsoon Precipitation ◽  
Late Cenozoic ◽  
River Drainage ◽  
History Of ◽  
Southern Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Lhasa River ◽  
Topographic Evolution

The interaction of surface erosion (e.g., fluvial incision) and tectonic uplift shapes the landform in the Tibetan Plateau. The Lhasa River flows toward the southwest across the central Gangdese Mountains in the southern Tibetan Plateau, characterized by a low-relief and high-elevation landscape. However, the evolution of low-relief topography and the establishment of the Lhasa River remain highly under debate. Here, we collected thermochronological ages reported in the Lhasa River drainage, using a 3D thermokinematic model to invert both late Cenozoic denudation and relief history of the Lhasa River drainage. Our results show that the Lhasa River drainage underwent four-phase denudation history, including two-stage rapid denudation at ∼25–16 Ma (with a rate of ∼0.42 km/Ma) and ∼16–12 Ma (with a rate of ∼0.72 km/Ma). In the latest Oligocene–early Miocene, uplift of the Gangdese Mountains triggered the rapid denudation and the formation of the current main drainage of the Lhasa River. In the middle Miocene, the second stage of the rapid denudation and the high relief were associated with intense incision of the Lhasa River, which is probably due to the enhanced Asian summer monsoon precipitation. This later rapid episode was consistent with the records of regional main drainage systems. After ∼12 Ma, the denudation rate decreases rapidly, and the relief of topography in the central Gangdese region was gradually subdued. This indicates that the fluvial erosion resulting from Asian monsoon precipitation increase significantly impacts on the topographic evolution in the central Gangdese region.

scholarly journals Exploiting Thermochronology to Quantify Exhumation Histories and Patterns of Uplift Along the Margins of Tibet

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin P. Furlong ◽  
Eric Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Thermal History ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Tectonic History ◽  
Time Histories ◽  
Major Fault ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cooling Behavior ◽  
Exhumation Rates ◽  
The Impact

The utilization of thermal-chronological data to constrain mountain building processes exploits the links among rock uplift, exhumation, and cooling during orogenesis. Conceptually, periods of rapid uplift and associated denudation will lead to cooling of rocks as they approach Earth’s surface. The linkage between uplift and exhumation can be complex, but in practice exhumation is often assumed to directly track uplift. The reconstruction of temperature-time histories via thermochronologic systems provides a proxy method to relate the cooling of rock as it is exhumed toward the surface to orogenesis. For the rapid exhumation rates that can occur in active orogenic systems the thermal history will be complex as a result of heat advection, rates of propagation of thermal perturbations, and other processes that affect the cooling behavior. These effects become amplified as exhumation rates increase, and in regions experiencing exhumation rates greater than ∼0.2–0.3 mm/yr (0.2–0.3 km/Ma) simple assumptions of cooling through a constant geotherm will bias the subsequent interpretation. Here we explore, through a suite of generalized models, the impact of exhumation rate and duration on the resulting thermal history and apparent age results. We then apply lessons from these simple exhumation systems to data sets from the high-relief ranges along the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau to determine exhumation histories constrained by those data. The resulting exhumation histories provide constraints on the onset of Cenozoic exhumation, the subsequent pace of exhumation, and on the tectonic history of one of the major fault systems in the central Longmen Shan.

Paleoaltitudinal histories for the northern and southern margins of the Tibetan Plateau during the Late Cenozoic: revealed by GDGTs

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chihao Chen ◽  
Yan Bai ◽  
Xiaomin Fang ◽  
Haichao Guo ◽  
Weilin Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Late Miocene ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Lake Surface ◽  
Terrestrial Organic Matter ◽  
Plant Fossils ◽  
History Of ◽  
Monsoon System ◽  
Uplift History

<p>As an important driver of global climate change during the Cenozoic, the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) has strongly influenced the origination and evolution of the Asian monsoon system, and therefore the aridification of central Asia. Over the last two decades, the application of stable isotope paleoaltimeters and the discoveries of mammal and plant fossils have greatly promoted the understanding of the uplift history of the TP. However, paleoaltitudinal reconstructions based on different paleoaltimeters have suggested differing outcomes and therefore remain controversial. Novel paleoaltimeters have therefore needed to be developed and applied to constrain the uplift history of the TP more accurately and effectively by comparing and verifying multi-proxies. Paleothermometers based on glyceryl dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs) are widely used in terrestrial and ocean temperature reconstructions. In this study, GDGT-based paleothermometers were tentatively applied to the Gyirong Basin on the southern TP, and the Xining Basins on the northern TP, in an attempt to quantitatively reconstruct their paleoaltitudes.</p><p>Both soil and aquatic-typed branched GDGTs have been identified from Late Miocene to Mid-Pliocene (7.0-3.2 Ma) samples taken from the Gyirong Basin; their reconstructed paleotemperatures were 7.5±3.3°C and 14.2±4.5°C, respectively. The former temperature may represent the mean temperature of the terrestrial organic matter input area, while the latter may represent the lake surface temperature. The results would suggest that the lake surface of the Gyirong Basin during the Late Miocene to Mid-Pliocene was 2.5±0.8 km and that the surrounding mountains exceeded 3.6±0.6 km, implying that the central Himalayas underwent a rapid uplift of ~1.5 km after the Mid-Pliocene.</p><p>GDGT-based paleotemperature reconstructions using MBT'<sub>5ME</sub> values show that the Xining Basin dropped in temperature by ~10°C during the ~10.5-8 Ma period, exceeding that in sea surface temperatures and low-altitude terrestrial temperatures during these periods. By combining these results with contemporaneous tectonic and sedimentary records, we infer that these cooling events signaled the regional uplift with the amplitude of ~1 km of the Xining basins. Our results support that the TP was still growing and uplifting substantially since the Late Miocene, which may provide new evidence for understanding the growth, expansion and uplift patterns of the TP.</p>

The tectonic evolution of the Tibetan Plateau

1988 ◽  
Vol 327 (1594) ◽  
pp. 379-413 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Late Jurassic ◽  
Middle Eocene ◽  
Late Triassic ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Peninsular India ◽  
Lhasa Terrane ◽  
Lateral Extrusion ◽  
Palaeomagnetic Data ◽  
Normal Thickness

The Tibetan Plateau, between the Kunlun Shan and the Himalayas, consists of terranes accreted successively to Eurasia. The northernmost, the Songban Ganzi Terrane, was accreted to the Kunlun (Tarim-North China Terrane) along the Kunlun-Qinling Suture during the late Permian. The Qiangtang Terrane accreted to the Songban-Ganzi along the Jinsha Suture during the late Triassic or earliest Jurassic, the Lhasa Terrane to the Qiangtang along the Banggong Suture during the late Jurassic and, finally, Peninsular India to the Lhasa Terrane along the Zangbo Suture during the Middle Eocene. The Kunlun Shan, Qiangtang and Lhasa Terranes are all underlain by Precambrian continental crust at least a billion years old. The Qiangtang and Lhasa Terranes came from Gondwanaland. Substantial southward ophiolite obduction occurred across the Lhasa Terrane from the Banggong Suture in the late Jurassic and from the Zangbo Suture in the latest Cretaceous-earliest Palaeocene. Palaeomagnetic data suggest successive wide Palaeotethyan oceans during the late Palaeozoic and early Mesozoic and a Neotethys which was at least 6000 km wide during the mid-Cretaceous. Thickening of the Tibetan crust to almost double the normal thickness occurred by northward-migrating north-south shortening and vertical stretching during the mid-Eocene to earliest Miocene indentation of Asia by India; Neogene strata are almost flat-lying and rest unconformably upon Palaeogene or older strata. Since the early Miocene, the northward motion of India has been accommodated principally by north south shortening both north and south of Tibet. From early Pliocene to the Present, the Tibetan Plateau has risen by about two kilometres and has suffered east-west extension. Little, if any, of the India Eurasia convergence has been accommodated by eastward lateral extrusion.

Palaeomagnetic results from the Tibetan Plateau

1988 ◽  
Vol 327 (1594) ◽  
pp. 239-262 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Blocking Temperature ◽  
High Coercivity ◽  
The Tibetan Plateau ◽  
Present Position ◽  
Lhasa Terrane ◽  
Igneous Province ◽  
Oriented Samples ◽  
Qiangtang Terrane

Palaeomagnetic measurements were carried out on 1325 oriented samples collected from 246 sites on a traverse of the Tibetan Plateau from Lhasa to Golmud in 1985, crossing the Lhasa Terrane, Qiangtang Terrane, and Kunlun Terrane. High blocking temperature, high coercivity, statistically grouped magnetizations were isolated from the following units: Lhasa Terrane — Cretaceous Takena Formation, mid-Cretaceous Nagqu volcanics, mid-Cretaceous Qelico volcanics; Qiangtang Terrane - Norian Batang Group volcanics, Kimmeridgian Yanshiping Group, Paleocene to Eocene Fenghuoshan Group; Kunlun Terrane — Visean to Namurian Dagangou Formation, dykes of the Triassic igneous province. The Triassic data from the Kunlun Terrane, Triassic and Lower Tertiary data from the Qiangtang Terrane and the Cretaceous data from the Lhasa Terrane indicate palaeolatitudes ca . 20° S of their present position within the Eurasian frame of reference. A possible interpretation is that the terranes successively accreted to Eurasia and remained in the southern position until the convergence of India drove them northward via a process of tectonic shortening and/or displacement of continental crust. The Carboniferous data from the Kunlun Terrane are consistent with moderate Southern Hemisphere latitude, well separated from Eurasia which was in the Northern Hemisphere at this time, implying the existence of ocean crust between these blocks during the Carboniferous.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document