Abstract
The apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronometry has been used to study the tectono-thermal evolution of mountains and sedimentary basins for over ten years. The closure temperature of helium is important for the apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronometry and has been widely studied by thermal simulation experiments. In this paper, the apatite He closure temperature was studied by establishing the evolutionary pattern between apatite He ages and apatite burial depth based on examined apatite He ages of natural samples obtained from drillholes in the Tarim basin, China. The study showed that the apatite He closure temperature of natural samples in the Tarim basin is approximately 88±5°C, higher than the result (∼75°C) obtained from the thermal simulation experiments. The high He closure temperature resulted from high effective uranium concentration, long-term radiation damage accumulation, and sufficient particle radii. This study is a reevaluation of the conventional apatite He closure temperature and has a great significance in studying the uplifting events in the late period of the basin-mountain tectonic evolution, of which the uplifting time and rates can be determined accurately.
Highlights
The apatite (U-Th)/He thermochronometry has been used to study the tectono-thermal evolution of mountains and sedimentary basins for over ten years
The apatite He closure temperature was studied by establishing the evolutionary pattern between apatite He ages and apatite burial depth based on examined apatite He ages of natural samples obtained from drillholes in the Tarim basin, China
We derived the apatite He closure temperature of the Tarim basin from evolutionary pattern between the apatite He ages and burial depths based on the examined apatite He ages of the natural samples obtained from drilling wells in the Tarim basin
Summary
The samples were collected from the Tarim basin, China (Figure 1). Samples should be collected from an area where tectonic movements are few and thick sediments are deposited in the late period, such as the Tabei Uplift, Northern Depression, and Central Uplift in the Tarim basin. The samples were collected from wells S14, S87, S110, and XH1 in the Tabei Uplift, well Sh1 in the Northern Depression, and wells Z2 and Z11 in the Central Uplift (Figure 3). The final solution was placed into an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, and the 238U/233U and 232Th/229Th ratios were measured to determine the U and Th contents in the apatite grains; (3) Calculation of (U-Th)/He ages—the (U-Th)/He measurement process was described in detail by Reiners [16].
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