%0 Journal article
%A Heberer, Bianca
%A Anzenbacher, Thomas
%A Neubauer, Franz
%A Genser, Johann
%A Dong, Yunpeng
%A Dunkl, István
%T Polyphase exhumation in the western Qinling Mountains, China: Rapid Early Cretaceous cooling along a lithospheric-scale tear fault and pulsed Cenozoic uplift
%R 10.1016/j.tecto.2014.01.011
%R 10.23689/fidgeo-2580
%J Tectonophysics
%V 617

%X 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.
%U http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?gldocs-11858/6893
%~  FID GEO-LEO e-docs