Uplift, climate and biotic changes at the Eocene-Oligocene transition in south-eastern Tibet

Tao Su; Robert A Spicer; Shi-Hu Li; He Xu; Jian Huang; Sarah Sherlock; Yong-Jiang Huang; Shu-Feng Li; Li Wang; Lin-Bo Jia; Wei-Yu-Dong Deng; Jia Liu; Cheng-Long Deng; Shi-Tao Zhang; Paul J Valdes; Zhe-Kun Zhou

doi:10.1093/nsr/nwy062

Uplift, climate and biotic changes at the Eocene-Oligocene transition in south-eastern Tibet

Natl Sci Rev. 2019 May;6(3):495-504. doi: 10.1093/nsr/nwy062. Epub 2018 Jun 12.

Authors

Tao Su^{1

2

3}, Robert A Spicer^{1

4}, Shi-Hu Li⁵, He Xu⁶, Jian Huang¹, Sarah Sherlock⁴, Yong-Jiang Huang⁷, Shu-Feng Li¹, Li Wang¹, Lin-Bo Jia⁷, Wei-Yu-Dong Deng^{1

2}, Jia Liu¹, Cheng-Long Deng⁸, Shi-Tao Zhang⁹, Paul J Valdes¹⁰, Zhe-Kun Zhou^{1

7}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla 666303, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Paleobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China.
⁴ School of Environment, Earth and Ecosystem Sciences, The Open University, MK7 6AA, UK.
⁵ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Geodynamics and Geohazards, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China.
⁶ Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Linyi University, Linyi 276000, China.
⁷ Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650204, China.
⁸ State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China.
⁹ Faculty of Land Resource Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming 650093, China.
¹⁰ School of Geographical Sciences and Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TH, UK.

Abstract

The uplift history of south-eastern Tibet is crucial to understanding processes driving the tectonic evolution of the Tibetan Plateau and surrounding areas. Underpinning existing palaeoaltimetric studies has been regional mapping based in large part on biostratigraphy that assumes a Neogene modernization of the highly diverse, but threatened, Asian biota. Here, with new radiometric dating and newly collected plant-fossil archives, we quantify the surface height of part of the south-eastern margin of Tibet in the latest Eocene (∼34 Ma) to be ∼3 km and rising, possibly attaining its present elevation (3.9 km) in the early Oligocene. We also find that the Eocene-Oligocene transition in south-eastern Tibet witnessed leaf-size diminution and a floral composition change from sub-tropical/warm temperate to cool temperate, likely reflective of both uplift and secular climate change, and that, by the latest Eocene, floral modernization on Tibet had already taken place, implying modernization was deeply rooted in the Palaeogene.

Keywords: Eocene; Oligocene; Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau; biodiversity; plant fossil; uplift.