Revised chronology of central Tibet uplift (Lunpola Basin)

Xiaomin Fang; Guillaume Dupont-Nivet; Chengshan Wang; Chunhui Song; Qingquan Meng; Weilin Zhang; Junsheng Nie; Tao Zhang; Ziqiang Mao; Yu Chen

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba7298

Revised chronology of central Tibet uplift (Lunpola Basin)

Sci Adv. 2020 Dec 9;6(50):eaba7298. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aba7298. Print 2020 Dec.

Authors

Xiaomin Fang^{1

2

3}, Guillaume Dupont-Nivet^{4

5}, Chengshan Wang⁶, Chunhui Song⁷, Qingquan Meng⁷, Weilin Zhang^{8

2}, Junsheng Nie³, Tao Zhang², Ziqiang Mao², Yu Chen⁷

Affiliations

¹ Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100101, China. fangxm@itpcas.ac.cn.
² Key Laboratory of Continental Collision and Plateau Uplift, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100101, China.
³ MOE Key Laboratory of Western China's Environment and College of Resources and Environment, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
⁴ Institute of Geosciences, Potsdam University, 14476 Potsdam, Germany.
⁵ Géosciences Rennes-UMR CNRS 6118, Université de Rennes, 35000 Rennes, France.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, Research Center for Tibetan Plateau Geology, China University of Geosciences (Beijing), Beijing 100083, China.
⁷ School of Earth Sciences and Key Laboratory of Western China's Mineral Resources of Gansu Province, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
⁸ Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing 100101, China.

Abstract

Knowledge of the topographic evolution of the Tibetan Plateau is essential for understanding its construction and its influences on climate, environment, and biodiversity. Previous elevations estimated from stable isotope records from the Lunpola Basin in central Tibet, which indicate a high plateau since at least 35 Ma, are challenged by recent discoveries of low-elevation tropical fossils apparently deposited at 25.5 Ma. Here, we use magnetostratigraphic and radiochronologic dating to revise the chronology of elevation estimates from the Lunpola Basin. The updated ages reconcile previous results and indicate that the elevations of central Tibet were generally low (<2.3 km) at 39.5 Ma and high (3.5 to 4.5 km) at ~26 Ma. This supports the existence in the Eocene of low-elevation longitudinally oriented narrow regions until their uplift in the early Miocene, with potential implications for the growth mechanisms of the Tibetan Plateau, Asian atmospheric circulation, surface processes, and biotic evolution.

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