Large-number detrital zircon U-Pb ages reveal global cooling caused the formation of the Chinese Loess Plateau during Late Miocene-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

Large-number detrital zircon U-Pb ages reveal global cooling caused the formation of the Chinese Loess Plateau during Late Miocene

Published:2022-10-14 Issue:41 Volume:8 Page:
ISSN:2375-2548
Container-title:Science Advances
language:en
Short-container-title:Sci. Adv.

Author:

Zhang Hanzhi¹^ORCID,Lu Huayu¹^ORCID,He Jing¹,Xie Wanting¹,Wang Hanlin¹^ORCID,Zhang Hongyan¹,Breecker Daniel²^ORCID,Bird Anna³^ORCID,Stevens Thomas⁴^ORCID,Nie Junsheng⁵,Li Gaojun⁶^ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling, School of Geography and Ocean Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China.

2. Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1722, USA.

3. Department of Geography, Geology and Environment, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK.

4. Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Villavägen 16, 752 36 Uppsala, Sweden.

5. MOE Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 73000, China.

6. Frontiers Science Center for Critical Earth Material Cycling, School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China.

Abstract

The formation and evolution of the landscape of the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) is debated because of uncertainties regarding dust provenance. We present a quantitative estimation of dust source contributions to the CLP, based on more than 37,100 detrital zircon U-Pb ages, combined with mineral assemblages and isotope analyses. Our results reveal that the CLP was stepwise formed by ~8 million years (Ma) and is mainly composed of material from the Northeastern Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, with stepwise shifts in relative contributions of different eolian silt sources occurring at ~2.6 Ma and 1.5 to 1.2 Ma. We infer that these changes were driven by stepwise global cooling, which induced aridification and enhanced silt production in glaciated-cold climate dust source regions, as well as dust ablation in the expanded arid regions. We propose that global cooling, rather than regional tectonic deformation, was the main driver of the formation and evolution of the CLP during late Cenozoic.

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Subject

Multidisciplinary

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