Diachronous uplift of the Tibetan plateau starting 40?Myr ago

Sun-Lin Chung (), Ching-Hua Lo, Tung-Yi Lee, Yuquan Zhang, Yingwen Xie, Xianhua Li, Kuo-Lung Wang and Pei-Ling Wang
Additional contact information
Sun-Lin Chung: National Taiwan University
Ching-Hua Lo: National Taiwan University
Tung-Yi Lee: National Taiwan Normal University
Yuquan Zhang: Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Yingwen Xie: Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xianhua Li: Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Kuo-Lung Wang: National Taiwan University
Pei-Ling Wang: National Taiwan University

Nature, 1998, vol. 394, issue 6695, 769-773

Abstract: Abstract The uplift of the Tibetan plateau is generally regarded as a response to the convective removal of the lower portion of the thickened Asian lithosphere1. This removal is also thought to be responsible for the east–west extension2 that took place during the India–Asia collision. The timing of these events has been a subject of great interest for understanding mountain-building processes, collisional tectonics and the influence of these processes on climate change3,4. In western Tibet, potassic lavas related to east–west extension were found to have been extruded over the past 20?Myr (refs 5, 6). Here we report the widespread occurrence of magmas in eastern Tibet which show similar geochemical signatures to the potassic lavas to the west but formed 40–30?Myr ago. These magmatic activities suggest a diachronous uplift history for the Tibetan plateau, with the convective removal of the lower lithosphere inducing rapid uplift in the east beginning some 40?Myr ago and in the west about 20?Myr later. This observation is consistent with sedimentation records from the Ganges–Brahmaputra delta to the Bengal fan7,8 and can better account for the tectonically driven models for strontium isotope evolution in the ocean9 and global cooling10 over the past 40?Myr.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/29511 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:394:y:1998:i:6695:d:10.1038_29511

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/29511

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().