title: A comparison of zircon U-Pb age results of the Red Clay sequence on the central Chinese Loess Plateau.
abstract: Single grain zircon U-Pb geochronology has demonstrated great potentials in extracting tectonic and atmospheric circulation signal carried by aeolian, fluvial, and fluviolacustrine sediments. A routine in this sort of studies is analyzing 100-150 grains and then compares zircon U-Pb age spectra between the measured sample and the potential sources. Here we compared the zircon U-Pb age results of the late Miocene-Pliocene Red Clay sequence of two neighboring sites from the Chinese Loess Plateau where similar provenance signal is expected. Although the results from the 5.5 Ma sediment support this prediction, the results from the 3 Ma sediment at these two sites differ from each other significantly. These results emphasize the importance of increasing analysis number per sample and combining the zircon U-Pb geochronology with other provenance tools in order to get reliable provenance information.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics, Department of Geology, Northwest University, Xi' an 710069, China.
authors.forename: Hujun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gong
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 73000, China.
authors.forename: Junsheng
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Nie
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 73000, China.
authors.forename: Zhao
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Western China's Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 73000, China.
authors.forename: Wenbin
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics, Department of Geology, Northwest University, Xi' an 710069, China.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics, Department of Geology, Northwest University, Xi' an 710069, China.
authors.forename: Yunxiang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang