Palaeoenvironmental changes in Eocene Tibetan lake systems traced by geochemistry, sedimentology and palynofacies

Abstract

• Late Eocene continental climate in Central Asia remains poorly understood. • Tibetan lake deposits preserve records of Eocene palaeoenvironmental changes. • Saline lakes in east-central Tibet existed in a cool and semi-arid desert-steppe. • Late Eocene aridification caused a palaeoenvironmental shift in Central Asia. • Tibetan palaeoclimate was primarily influenced by regional to global drivers. Ancient lake deposits preserve detailed records of Cenozoic environmental changes, providing information on past climate, vegetation, precipitation and lake chemistry. This study focuses on palaeoenvironmental changes recorded in Eocene limnic environments across what is today the modern Tibetan Plateau. We describe a section dated as late Eocene (~38–37 Ma) and integrate these findings within a regional context of similarly-aged Tibetan lake deposits across the plateau. These sedimentary archives of environmental change indicate a period of late Eocene aridification and cooling in the lead-up to the greenhouse-icehouse transition, which remains poorly understood in Central Asia. We show, based on geochemical, sedimentological, and palynofacies analyses, that a large saline lake existed within a semi-arid to arid steppe environment in the Nangqian Basin, east-central Tibet. The saline lake experienced cyclic drying intervals with shifts to a playa lake / mudflat system. Evidence of increased aridity is recorded in the upper part of the section, including a thinning of gypsum beds, decrease in palynomorph abundance, and concurrent increase in wood debris and amorphous organic matter. This is consistent with late Eocene aridity in Asia, drying of the playa lake, and an impoverished desert-steppe vegetation. Grain size data and geochemistry indicate a stable provenance of sedimentary material, suggesting that tectonic activity did not dominate sedimentation in east-central Tibet during deposition of these successions. Rather, palaeoenvironmental changes across the Tibetan region were most probably controlled by global climate oscillations and retreat of the proto-Paratethys Sea during the late Eocene: knowledge that is relevant for ecological interpretations through the Cenozoic, Quaternary and to the present.