Constraints on Cenozoic regional drainage evolution of SW China from the provenance of the Jianchuan Basin

Abstract

Detrital zircon U‐Pb geochronology was applied to Cenozoic fluvial sedimentary rocks from the Jianchuan Basin, Yunnan Province, China to constrain the provenance and the nature of paleo‐drainage. Local geology testifies to a large river flowing through the Jianchuan Basin during the Paleogene and this previously has been linked to a paleo drainage system that connected the Qiangtang and Lhasa blocks to the South China Sea. The detrital zircon results from this study do not fit with this model and instead show provenance consistent with a river draining a watershed within the Songpan‐Garze Complex, most likely from the northeast. From the late Oligocene and thereafter zircon provenance records greater contributions from erosion of local sources that surround the basin including the South China Block and Yidun Arc rocks that suggest loss of the northern sources. The timing for these changes overlap with regional deformation related to strike‐slip faulting or displacement by shear strain rather than the later uplift associated with an expanding margin of the Tibetan Plateau.