The collision of India with the Eurasian plate and the subsequent uplift of the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau (HTP) have been implicated in the development of the Asian monsoon system (Molnar et al., 1993) and the consequent increased drawdown of atmospheric CO 2 through enhanced silicate weathering or organic carbon burial (France-Lanord & Derry, 1997; Raymo & Ruddiman, 1992). A reduction of atmospheric CO 2 associated with HTP uplift has been invoked as a cause of major global cooling and establishment of permanent Antarctic ice sheets that characterized the transition from the Cenozoic greenhouse to the present icehouse climate (Raymo & Ruddiman, 1992). The development of the monsoon has even been suggested to have itself influenced HTP tectonics by increased erosion and exhumation (e.g., Clift et al., 2008; Harris, 2007; Iaffaldano et al., 2011). The timing of Asian monsoon development is debated with proposed ages clustering around the Late Miocene (∼8-11 Myrs ago) (Molnar et al., 1993) and Late Oligocene/Early Miocene (∼25−22 Myrs ago) (Clift et al., 2008; Guo, 2002) but there is even evidence for a strong seasonality of precipitation in the region as early as ∼39 Myrs ago (Licht et al., 2014). The elevation histories of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau are poorly constrained and most likely distinct with data suggesting significant elevation of parts of Tibet prior to collision with India and a well-developed proto-plateau by the Eocene (see review by Wang et al., 2014). There are even fewer paleo-elevation data for the Himalayas with recent studies suggesting that the mountains just south of the Yarlung-Tsangpo suture were higher than 2 km in the early Miocene and at a similar elevation to today for at least the past 15 Myrs (Ding et al., 2017; Gébelin et al., 2013). The uplift and exhumation histories of different regions within the Himalayas were also likely asynchronous with the age of exposed leucogranites decreasing from west to east along the central Himalaya (Harris, 2007; Webb et al., 2017). The orographic insulation caused by the Himalayas is thought to have been an important driver of monsoon evolution (Boos & Kuang, 2010) but our understanding of the interaction of tectonics, monsoon-driven erosion, silicate weathering and global
