title: Late Oligocene-early Miocene birth of the Taklimakan Desert.
abstract: As the world's second largest sand sea and one of the most important dust sources to the global aerosol system, the formation of the Taklimakan Desert marks a major environmental event in central Asia during the Cenozoic. Determining when and how the desert formed holds the key to better understanding the tectonic-climatic linkage in this critical region. However, the age of the Taklimakan remains controversial, with the dominant view being from ∼ 3.4 Ma to ∼ 7 Ma based on magnetostratigraphy of sedimentary sequences within and along the margins of the desert. In this study, we applied radioisotopic methods to precisely date a volcanic tuff preserved in the stratigraphy. We constrained the initial desertification to be late Oligocene to early Miocene, between ∼ 26.7 Ma and 22.6 Ma. We suggest that the Taklimakan Desert was formed as a response to a combination of widespread regional aridification and increased erosion in the surrounding mountain fronts, both of which are closely linked to the tectonic uplift of the Tibetan-Pamir Plateau and Tian Shan, which had reached a climatically sensitive threshold at this time.
authors.affiliation: School of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China; Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China; zhenghb@njnu.edu.cn xcwnju@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Hongbo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China; zhenghb@njnu.edu.cn xcwnju@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Xiaochun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan;
authors.forename: Ryuji
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tada
authors.affiliation: Department of Geology and Geophysics, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803;
authors.forename: Peter D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Clift
authors.affiliation: Tourism and Environment College, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an 710119, China;
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Western Australian Argon Isotope Facility, Department of Applied Geology and John de Laeter Centre, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6845, Australia.
authors.forename: Fred
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Jourdan
authors.affiliation: School of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China;
authors.forename: Ping
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: School of Geography Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China;
authors.forename: Mengying
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: He
keywords: Taklimakan Desert; desertification; early Miocene; late Oligocene; tectonic uplift