title: Polyphase exhumation in the western Qinling Mountains, China: Rapid Early Cretaceous cooling along a lithospheric-scale tear fault and pulsed Cenozoic uplift.
abstract: The western sector of the Qinling-Dabie orogenic belt plays a key role in both Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous "Yanshanian" intracontinental tectonics and Cenozoic lateral escape triggered by India-Asia collision. The Taibai granite in the northern Qinling Mountains is located at the westernmost tip of a Yanshanian granite belt. It consists of multiple intrusions, constrained by new Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous U-Pb zircon ages (156 ± 3 Ma and 124 ± 1 Ma). Applying various geochronometers (40Ar/39Ar on hornblende, biotite and K-feldspar, apatite fission-track, apatite [U-Th-Sm]/He) along a vertical profile of the Taibai Mountain refines the cooling and exhumation history. The new age constraints record the prolonged pre-Cenozoic intracontinental deformation as well as the cooling history mostly related to India-Asia collision. We detected rapid cooling for the Taibai granite from ca. 800 to 100 °C during Early Cretaceous (ca. 123 to 100 Ma) followed by a period of slow cooling from ca. 100 Ma to ca. 25 Ma, and pulsed exhumation of the low-relief Cretaceous peneplain during Cenozoic times. We interpret the Early Cretaceous rapid cooling and exhumation as a result from activity along the southern sinistral lithospheric scale tear fault of the recently postulated intracontinental subduction of the Archean/Palaeoproterozoic North China Block beneath the Alashan Block. A Late Oligocene to Early Miocene cooling phase might be triggered either by the lateral motion during India-Asia collision and/or the Pacific subduction zone. Late Miocene intensified cooling is ascribed to uplift of the Tibetan Plateau.
authors.affiliation: Dept. Geography and Geology, University of Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstr. 34, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Bianca
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Heberer
authors.affiliation: Dept. Geography and Geology, University of Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstr. 34, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Anzenbacher
authors.affiliation: Dept. Geography and Geology, University of Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstr. 34, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Franz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Neubauer
authors.affiliation: Dept. Geography and Geology, University of Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstr. 34, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria.
authors.forename: Johann
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Genser
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics, Department of Geology, Northwest University, Northern Taibai Str. 229, Xi'an 710069, China.
authors.forename: Yunpeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: Geoscience Center, University of Göttingen, Goldschmidtstrasse 3, D-37077 Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: István
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dunkl
keywords: Age–elevation-relationship; Qinling Mountain; Thermochronology; Tibetan Plateau uplift; Yanshanian orogeny