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

SUBMITTER: Heberer B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4802510 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature