[1] The eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau combines very high relief with almost no Tertiary foreland sedimentation and little evidence of Cenozoic tectonic shortening. While river incision and landscape development at the plateau margin have received significant attention over the last decade, little is known about the Cenozoic development of the adjacent Sichuan Basin. Here we assess the Cenozoic thermal history of this basin using detrital apatite fission track (AFT) and (U-Th)/He techniques and establish the presence of an exhumed AFT paleopartial annealing zone across much of the basin. This observation, combined with stratigraphic and borehole sections and inverse modeling of confined apatite fission tracks, indicates that the strata within the basin have undergone accelerated cooling after $40 Ma, consistent with the widespread erosion of $1 to 4 km of overlying sedimentary material. This regional-scale erosion is most likely a response to changes in the Yangtze River system draining and removing sediment from the basin. The base-level fall associated with this erosion contributed to a relative increase in relief across the Longmen Shan and may have helped drive Miocene-Recent incision and unloading of the plateau margin.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Like the other large river systems that drain the India-Asia collision, the Yangtze River was 17 assembled through a series of Cenozoic capture events. These events are important for 18 orogenic erosion and sediment delivery, but their timing remains largely unknown. Here we 19 identify enhanced cooling in the Three Gorges region in central China, a key capture site 20 during basin development, beginning at 40-45 Ma. This event is not visible in regional 21 thermochronological data but is near-contemporaneous with the onset of widespread 22 denudation in the Sichuan Basin, just upstream of the Three Gorges. While we cannot rule out 23 alternative explanations, the simplest mechanism that links these events is progressive capture 24

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Erosion during ridge subduction • M. Wipf et al.

Miocene Intrusives and Lower Cretaceous siliciclastic sedimentary rocks from the Basal Complex in western-Fuerteventura were analyzed with low-temperature thermochronometric methods such as fission-track, and (UTh-Sm)/He dating, in order to reveal the evolution of the island's exhumation history. The obtained thermochronometric data yields a very slow rate of cooling in the order of 1.5-3°C/Myr from *50 to 20 Ma for the Early Cretaceous siliciclastic rocks. These sedimentary units have never been heated significantly above 240°C after deposition and still record the submarine onset of the island's formation in the Eocene. Intrusive bodies associated with the early Miocene magmatic activity of the central volcanic complex of the island show rapid initial cooling rates of 50-70°C/Myr from *20 to 14 Ma. Contemporaneous with the intrusions the cooling rate of the Cretaceous sedimentary units increased to 25-35°C/Myr and it is inferred that this increase is associated with enhanced uplift and erosion of the Central Volcanic Complex. After *14 Ma rates slowed down to 3-6°C/Myr. Palaeosols overlying the sedimentary units are themselves covered by Pliocene basalt flows and reveal that the sedimentary rocks reached the surface before *5 Ma. The thermochronometric data obtained in this study for central Fuerteventura is difficult to reconcile with the cooling history derived from previously obtained fissiontrack and K-Ar data from the north-western part of the island. This inconsistency is likely to indicate that the exhumation history of Fuerteventura is more complex and regionally subdivided than previously believed.