The rise and demise of the Paleogene Central Tibetan Valley.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35138908.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abj0944 and PMC identifier 8827648.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Reconstructing the Paleogene topography and climate of central Tibet informs understanding of collisional tectonic mechanisms and their links to climate and biodiversity. Radiometric dates of volcanic/sedimentary rocks and paleotemperatures based on clumped isotopes within ancient soil carbonate nodules from the Lunpola Basin, part of an east-west trending band of basins in central Tibet and now at 4.7 km, suggest that the basin rose from <2.0 km at 50 to 38 million years (Ma) to >4.0 km by 29 Ma. The height change is quantified using the rates at which wet-bulb temperatures (<i>T</i><sub>w</sub>) decline at land surfaces as those surface rise. In this case, <i>T</i><sub>w</sub> fell from ~8°C at ~38 Ma to ~1°C at 29 Ma, suggesting at least ~2.0 km of surface uplift in ~10 Ma under warm Eocene to Oligocene conditions. These results confirm that a Paleogene Central Tibetan Valley transformed to a plateau before the Neogene.