Pliocene uplift of the northern Tibetan Plateau

Neogene redbeds passing upward into upward-coarsening conglomerate and debris-flow deposits at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains record the change in paleoslope related to uplift of the surface of the northern Tibetan Plateau. Detailed magnetostratigraphy of a 4.5 km section near Yecheng in the weste...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geology (Boulder) 2000-08, Vol.28 (8), p.715-718
Main Authors: Zheng, Hongbo, Powell, Christopher McAulay, An, Zhisheng, Zhou, Jie, Dong, Guangrong
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:Neogene redbeds passing upward into upward-coarsening conglomerate and debris-flow deposits at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains record the change in paleoslope related to uplift of the surface of the northern Tibetan Plateau. Detailed magnetostratigraphy of a 4.5 km section near Yecheng in the western Kunlun Mountains shows that the change from deposition on distal alluvial plains to proximal alluvial fans occurred during the Gilbert reversed chron (4.5-3.5 Ma). The change in depositional facies was accompanied by an increase in sedimentation rate from an average ~0.15 mm/yr between the earliest Oligocene and the earliest Pliocene to 1.4 mm/yr in the Gauss normal chron (3.6-2.6 Ma). We interpret the change in depositional facies and increase in sedimentation rate as indicating that the main uplift of the northwestern Tibetan Plateau began ca. 4.5 Ma.
ISSN:0091-7613
DOI:10.1130/0091-7613(2000)282.0.CO;2