Mesozoic–Tertiary exhumation history of the Altai Mountains, northern Xinjiang, China: New constraints from apatite fission track data

Yuan, Wanming; Carter, Andrew; Dong, Junping; Bao, Zhiwei; An, Yinchang; Guo, Zhaojie

doi:10.1016/j.tecto.2005.09.007

Cited by 122 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…7), but some caution is needed to interpret this slow cooling phase because it often takes place at temperatures just outside the PAZ where the sensitivity of the model decreases. However, such a slow cooling period is also recognized in the thermochronological data from the northern Kyrgyz Tien Shan (Bullen et al, 2001(Bullen et al, , 2003De Grave et al, 2013;Glorie et al, 2010;Macaulay et al, 2013Macaulay et al, , 2014 and southern Altai (De Grave and Van den haute, 2002;De Grave et al, 2008;Yuan et al, 2006).…”

Section: Late Cretaceous-paleogene Tectonic Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 85%

“…Magnetostratigraphic studies also underscore that the onset of the development of the modern Tien Shan initiated during the Miocene (Charreau et al, 2006(Charreau et al, , 2009. In the Altai region, late Cenozoic reactivation seems to start in the Miocene, with clear intensification in the Pliocene, and reflects in an analogous manner the initiation of the construction of the modern Altai Mountains (De Grave and Van den haute, 2002;Vassallo et al, 2007;Yuan et al, 2006).…”

Section: Late Cenozoic Reactivationmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Bullen et al (2001, Glorie et al (2010), Macaulay et al (2014) for the northern Kyrgyz Tien Shan; Dumitru et al (2001), Jolivet et al (2010), Hendrix et al (1992Hendrix et al ( , 1994, Q. Wang et al (2009) for the Chinese Central and Northern Tien Shan; De Grave et al (2007, 2008, 2011b), De Grave and Van den haute (2002); Glorie et al (2012a), Yuan et al (2006) for the southern Altai mountains. These studies already demonstrate the existence of several reactivation periods after the final amalgamation of the ancestral CAOB in the Permian.…”

Section: Aft Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Jolivet et al, 2010Jolivet et al, , 2013aJolivet et al, , 2013bMetelkin et al, 2010;Wilhem et al, 2012 and references therein). In the southern Altai Mountains, several AFT studies point to a Late Jurassic-Cretaceous basement cooling event, which is generally linked to both the Mongol-Okhotsk and the Cimmerian Orogeny during the Mesozoic (Cogné et al, 2005;De Grave et al, 2007Glorie et al, 2012aGlorie et al, , 2012bHalim et al, 1998;Yuan et al, 2006). However, most authors favor the Mongol-Okhotsk Orogeny and subsequent collapse as the main driving force for the Late Jurassic-Cretaceous cooling and denudation in the Altai, given the more proximal location of the Altai to the Mongol-Okhotsk collision zone.…”

Section: Late Mesozoic Reactivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Late-Paleozoic emplacement and Meso-Cenozoic reactivation of the southern Kazakhstan granitoid basement

et al. 2015

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International audienceThe Ili-Balkhash Basin in southeastern Kazakhstan is located at the junction of the actively deforming mountain ranges of western Junggar and the Tien Shan, and is therefore part of the southwestern Central Asian Orogenic Belt. The basement of the Ili-Balkhash area consists of an assemblage of mainly Precambrian microcontinental fragments, magmatic arcs and accretionary complexes. Eight magmatic basement samples (granitoids and tuffs) from the Ili-Balkhash area were dated with zircon U-Pb LA-ICP-MS and yield Carboniferous to late Permian (~ 350-260 Ma) crystallization ages. These ages are interpreted as reflecting the transition from subduction to (post-) collisional magmatism, related to the closure of the Junggar-Balkhash Ocean during the Carboniferous – early Permian and hence, to the final late Paleozoic accretion history of the ancestral Central Asian Orogenic Belt. Apatite fission track (AFT) dating of 14 basement samples (gneiss, granitoids and volcanic tuffs) mainly provides Cretaceous cooling ages. Thermal history modeling based on the AFT data reveals that several intracontinental tectonic reactivation episodes affected the studied basement during the late Mesozoic and Cenozoic. Late Mesozoic reactivation and associated basement exhumation is interpreted as distant effects of the Cimmerian collisions at the southern Eurasian margin and possibly of the Mongol-Okhotsk Orogeny in SE Siberia during the Jurassic – Cretaceous. Following tectonic stability during the Palaeogene, inherited basement structures were reactivated during the Neogene (constrained by Miocene AFT ages of ~ 17–10 Ma). This late Cenozoic reactivation is interpreted as the far-field response of the India-Eurasia collision and reflects the onset of modern mountain building and denudation in southeast Kazakhstan, which seems to be at least partially controlled by the inherited basement architecture

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Section: Late Cretaceous-paleogene Tectonic Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Late Cenozoic Reactivationmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Aft Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Late Mesozoic Reactivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Late-Paleozoic emplacement and Meso-Cenozoic reactivation of the southern Kazakhstan granitoid basement

et al. 2015

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“…Chen et al, 2000;Wang et al, 2001;Sella et al, 2002). The onset of India-related deformation in the Altai is poorly constrained; coarsening sedimentation in basins in and around the Altai points to initial range uplift during the late Oligocene or early Miocene (Devyatkin, 1974(Devyatkin, , 1981Howard et al, 2003), whilst apatite fission-track (AFT) modelling suggests Pliocene in the Russian Altai (De Grave & van den Haute, 2002) and at the Baatar Hyarhan massif in the eastern Altai (Vassallo, 2006), but Miocene in the interior part of the Chinese Altai (Yuan et al, 2006).…”

Section: Tectonic Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The late Quaternary slip-rate of the Har-Us-Nuur fault (Mongolian Altai) from cosmogenic 10Be and luminescence dating

Nissen

Walker

Bayasgalan

et al. 2009

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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The Altai range (western Mongolia) accommodates NNE-SSW shortening across the northern India-Eurasia collision zone by dextral slip on faults trending NNW-SSE, and anticlockwise, vertical-axis rotations of fault-bounded blocks. However, fault slip-rates and the way in which faulting evolves over time are poorly understood, and form the motivation for this study. We focussed on the HarUs-Nuur fault, a major transpressional fault bounding the eastern margin of the Altai. Three abandoned alluvial fan surfaces, each displaced right-laterally by the fault, were targeted for dating with cosmogenic 10 Be and quartz optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). The first surface (A2) shows an exponential decrease in 10 Be with increasing depth, with a significant inherited compo- * Corresponding author Material from the same sampling pit was dated at ∼19 ka with OSL, but we consider this younger age to be incorrect, possibly due to feldspar contamination or abnormal quartz OSL characteristics. The A2 surface is displaced by 175 m, implying a (maximum) dextral slip-rate of 2.4 ± 0.4 mm yr −1 . A second fan surface (F1) was dated at ∼6 ka with OSL and shows little variation in 10 Be with depth, consistent with this young age. The inherited component is higher than for A2, indicating contrasting levels of inheritance for different periods of fan aggradation. A final surface (F2) shows scattered 10 Be concentrations and lacks material suitable for OSL, so cannot be dated precisely. Using the total vertical displacement across the fault, we place the initiation of movement on the fault at ∼2 Ma, significantly later than the late Oligocene to Miocene (28-5 Ma) onset of shortening in the Altai region. This suggests that deformation in the Altai has widened over time to incorporate new faults at the range margins (such as Har-Us-Nuur), possibly because older faults in the range interior have rotated about vertical axes into orientations that require work to be done against gravity.

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Post‐rift Tectonic History of the Songliao Basin, NE China: Cooling Events and Post‐rift Unconformities Driven by Orogenic Pulses From Plate Boundaries

et al. 2018

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The classic lithosphere‐stretching model predicts that the post‐rift evolution of extensional basin should be exclusively controlled by decaying thermal subsidence. However, the stratigraphy of the Songliao Basin in northeastern China shows that the post‐rift evolution was punctuated by multiple episodes of uplift and exhumation events, commonly attributed to the response to regional tectonic events, including the far‐field compression from plate margins. Three prominent tectonostratigraphic post‐rift unconformities are recognized in the Late Cretaceous strata of the basin: T11, T03, and T02. The subsequent Cenozoic history is less constrained due to the incomplete record of younger deposits. In this paper, we utilize detrital apatite fission track (AFT) thermochronology to unravel the enigmatic timing and origin of post‐rift unconformities. Relating the AFT results to the unconformities and other geological data, we conclude that in the post‐rift stage, the basin experienced a multiepisodic tectonic evolution with four distinct cooling and exhumation events. The thermal history and age pattern document the timing of the unconformities in the Cretaceous succession: the T11 unconformity at ~88–86 Ma, the T03 unconformity at ~79–75 Ma, and the T02 unconformity at ~65–50 Ma. A previously unrecognized Oligocene unconformity is also defined by a ~32–24 Ma cooling event. Tectonically, all the cooling episodes were regional, controlled by plate boundary stresses. We propose that Pacific dynamics influenced the wider part of eastern Asia during the Late Cretaceous until Cenozoic, whereas the far‐field effects of the Neo‐Tethys subduction and collision processes became another tectonic driver in the later Cenozoic.

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Mesozoic–Tertiary exhumation history of the Altai Mountains, northern Xinjiang, China: New constraints from apatite fission track data

Cited by 122 publications

References 21 publications

Late-Paleozoic emplacement and Meso-Cenozoic reactivation of the southern Kazakhstan granitoid basement

Late-Paleozoic emplacement and Meso-Cenozoic reactivation of the southern Kazakhstan granitoid basement

The late Quaternary slip-rate of the Har-Us-Nuur fault (Mongolian Altai) from cosmogenic 10Be and luminescence dating

Post‐rift Tectonic History of the Songliao Basin, NE China: Cooling Events and Post‐rift Unconformities Driven by Orogenic Pulses From Plate Boundaries

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