Mid-Miocene uplift of the northern Qilian Shan as a result of the northward growth of the northern Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

The northern Tibetan Plateau, north of the Qaidam Basin and south of the Hexi Corridor (China), consists of a series of WNW- to NW-trending elongated mountain ranges. Deciphering the time-space deformation pattern of these ranges is central to understanding the mechanism of plateau formation and to the controversial issue of whether Tibet has undergone progressive northward growth or synchronous growth since the India-Eurasia collision. Here, we report new constraints on the timing of accelerated uplift of the Tuolai Shan, one of the elongated mountain ranges in the northern Tibetan Plateau. New apatite fission-track data from an elevation transect in the Tuolai Shan provide a definitive tie to rapid cooling that began at 17–15 Ma. We attribute this rapid cooling to accelerated exhumation resulting from thrusting in the hanging wall of the Haiyuan fault in response to progressive northward growth of the plateau. Combining these fission-track data and the published geologic, sedimentological, and thermochronologic data from the northern Qilian Shan and Hexi Corridor, we propose a progressively north-northeastward growth model for the northernmost part of Tibet, suggesting that deformation in the inner Qilian Shan occurred synchronously in the middle Miocene, and subsequently, increasingly further north.