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Introduction
Current institution
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March 2023 - present
September 2010 - present
January 2014 - July 2015
Education
June 1998 - August 2002
University of Arizona
Field of study
- Géosciences
Publications
Publications (261)
The long‐term effects of present‐day climate change on pollination are unquantified. However, distinguishing climatic drivers of ancient changes in pollination could provide valuable insights into biotic responses to near‐future climate states. Herein, we show that pollination in a group of gymnosperm shrubs ( Ephedra L., Gnetales) was irrevocably...
The interplay between tectonic rock uplift and climatically modulated erosion governs landscape evolution and influences how mountain ranges affect climate, biogeochemical cycling, ecology, and biodiversity. The Himalayas, Earth’s highest mountain range, have inspired a large body of work suggesting that Himalayan topography is primarily governed b...
作为自晚始新世以来劳亚大陆和冈瓦纳大陆之间植物扩散的交汇点,缅甸中部盆地出土了丰富多样的化石花粉。本研究报道了来自缅甸中部盆地上始新统Yaw 组无患子科(Sapindaceae)植物的一种花粉化石新属和新种——格林氏粉属(Grimipollis)和缅甸格林氏粉(Grimmipollis burmanica)。利用层次聚类分析和花粉图谱揭示其花粉纹饰与其他类似属的相似性和古生态。Grimmipollis 的花粉粒具有副合孔(parasyncolporate)的孔口,两侧有顶孔区(apocolpial field),孔沟边缘(margines)明显,副合孔的孔沟沿线有弧形、结节状和绳状的中孔脊(mesocolpial ridges),以及显著的疣状或槽状顶孔区(apocolpia)。这些特征将该...
The past location of the Burma Terrane during the convergence of the Indian and Asia tectonic plates, is key for unraveling the regional geodynamic, paleoenvironmental, and paleobiogeographic history of the eastern edge of the Himalayan orogen. Paleomagnetic data provides the ability to constrain the Burma Terrane location, however, it has been ver...
Paleogeographic maps illustrate the distribution of land and sea, as well as the topography of the Earth’s surface during different geological periods based on the compilation of a wide range of geological and geophysical datasets. These maps provide boundary conditions for various models of the Earth’s systems, including climate, mantle convection...
The Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT) marks the passage from Eocene greenhouse to Oligocene icehouse conditions. It holds keys to our understanding of the behavior of climate systems under major pCO2 shifts. While the environmental impact of the EOT is rather homogenous in oceans, it is much more heterogeneous on continents. Although little to no c...
The dry continental interior of Asia has remained arid throughout most of its geological history, yet the future of this unique ecosystem remains unclear. Here we use palynological and isotopic records to track vegetation and moisture throughout the warm early Eocene (57 to 44 million years ago) as an analogue for extreme atmospheric CO2 scenarios....
Premise:
The rise of angiosperm‐dominated tropical rainforests has been proposed to have occurred shortly after the Cretaceous–Paleogene transition. Paleocene fossil wood assemblages are rare yet provide important data for understanding these forests and whether their wood anatomical features can be used to document the changes that occurred during...
The Tibetan Plateau was formed by intense Cenozoic shortening (up to 1,100 km) of a composite “proto‐Tibet,” itself the product of a long Paleozoic and Mesozoic history of accretion of Gondwana‐derived continental fragments and volcanic arcs against the Asian continental margin. The difficult access and the scarcity of outcrops have long limited th...
The debated mechanism and timing of formation of the Pamir orogenic salient provides an ideal case to combine paleomagnetic and metamorphic analyses. Opposing views argue for either oroclinal bending of the Pamir since the India-Asia collision or for an originally arcuate shape, which can be tested using paleomagnetism to estimate vertical-axis rot...
Climatic optima and hyperthermals of the Paleogene period (66-34 Ma) open windows
into the past to explore the Earth System under extreme conditions, beyond several tipping points. During this period Central Asia was intensely hot and arid and offered onlya few corridors between Asian and European ecosystems that enabled signifcant dispersal events...
The Asian monsoons are triggered by complex interactions between the atmosphere, Asian and African orography, and the surrounding oceans, resulting in highly seasonal climate and specific regional features. It was thought that the Asian monsoon was established during the Neogene, but recent evidence for monsoon-like precipitation seasonality occurr...
The debated vegetation response to climate change can be investigated through palynological fossil records from past extreme climate conditions. In this context, the early Eocene (53.3 to 41.2 million years ago (Ma)) is often referred to as a model for a greenhouse Earth. In the Xining Basin, situated on the North-eastern Tibetan Plateau (NETP), th...
The Tibetan Plateau was formed by intense Cenozoic shortening (up to 1100 km) of a composite “proto-Tibet”, itself the product of a long Paleozoic and Mesozoic history of accretion of Gondwana-derived continental fragments and volcanic arcs against the Asian continental margin. The difficult access and the scarcity of outcrops have long limited the...
Paleogeographic maps play a central integrating role across all the disciplines of the Earth System Sciences. They increasingly serve as boundary conditions for climate, earth, and life models and are widely used to convey our understanding of the Earth System's evolution. We review methods and data used for making paleogeographic reconstructions t...
The Paleocene lavas from Dianzhong Formation (E1d) in Linzhou basin of southern Lhasa terrane are a key target for paleomagnetic investigations into the timing and paleolatitude of the initial India‐Asia collision. Controversy exists, however, on whether these rocks preserve a primary remanent magnetization. Here we reanalyze previously published t...
The transition from a greenhouse to an icehouse world at the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT) coincided with a large decrease of pollen from the steppe-adapted genus Nitraria. This genus, now common along the Mediterranean coast, Asia and Australia, has a proposed coastal origin and a geographically widespread fossil record. Here we investigated t...
Fluvial erosion of small mountain belts is widely represented as a wave of upstream migration of knickpoints, starting from a stationary boundary of a high topography created by increased rock uplift rates. However, fluvial erosion remains poorly constrained when orogens expand in width with their boundaries continuously advancing towards the forel...
As a crossroads for plant dispersal between Laurasia and Gondwana since at least the
late Eocene, the Central Myanmar Basins have yielded rich and diverse fossil pollen .
Here we report Grimmipollis burmanica, a new genus and species in the soapberry
family (Sapindaceae) from the upper Eocene Yaw Formation in the Central Myanmar
Basins. We also inv...
Obtaining accurate age control for fossils found on Java (Indonesia) has been and remains challenging due to geochronologic and stratigraphic uncertainties. In the 1890s, Dubois excavated numerous faunal fossils—including the first remains of Homo erectus—in sediments exposed along the Solo River at Trinil. Since then, various, and often contradict...
The Burma Terrane has yielded some of the earliest pieces of evidence for monsoonal rainfall in the Bay of Bengal. However, Burmese ecosystems and their potential monsoonal imprint remain poorly studied. This study focuses on the late Eocene Yaw Formation (23° N) in central Myanmar, which was located near the equator (c. 5° N) during the Eocene. We...
Some of the earliest pieces of evidence for monsoonal activity in the Bengal Bay come from the middle and Upper Eocene sedimentary series of Myanmar. Recent paleogeographic reconstructions have yet relocated Myanmar close to the equator during the Eocene, which questions the relevance of Burmese material to study past South Asian monsoonal activity...
The Cenozoic strata of the Xining Basin, NE Tibet, have provided crucial records for understanding the tectonic and paleo‐environmental evolution of the region. Yet, the age for the lower part of the sedimentary stratigraphy and consequently the early tectonic evolution of the basin remain debated. Here, we present the litho‐ and magnetostratigraph...
Knowledge of the tectonic history of the Pamir contributes to our understanding of both the evolution of collisional orogenic belts as well as factors controlling Central Asian aridification. It is, however, not easy to decipher the Mesozoic–Cenozoic tectonics of the Pamir due to extensive Neogene deformation in an orogen that remains largely under...
The palaeobotanical record of Myanmar (Burma) is poorly documented despite its importance for understanding the evolution of Asian monsoonal ecosystems through time. Here, we describe 20 taxa of fossil wood from 30 silicified specimens collected in the upper lower to lowermost middle Miocene Natma Formation, central Myanmar. These fossils share aff...
Reorganization of the Asian climate from one dominated by global planetary wind systems to a regional monsoon climate is closely related to the surface uplift of the Tibetan Plateau (TP). However, evaluating this climatic reorganization is limited by difficulty in constraining the complex, multistaged uplift of the TP and contradictory evidence reg...
Pedogenic carbonate is widespread at mid latitudes where warm and dry conditions favor soil carbonate growth from spring to fall. The mechanisms and timing of pedogenic carbonate formation are more ambiguous in the tropical domain, where long periods of soil water saturation and high soil respiration enhance calcite dissolution. This paper provides...
The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (ca. 56 million years ago) offers a primary analogue for future global warming and carbon cycle recovery. Yet, where and how massive carbon emissions were mitigated during this climate warming event remains largely unknown. Here we show that organic carbon burial in the vast epicontinental seaways that extended...
The Cenozoic history of the Tibetan Plateau topography is critical for understanding the evolution of the Indian‐Eurasian collision, climate, and biodiversity. However, the long‐term growth and landscape evolution of the Tibetan Plateau remain ambiguous, it remains unclear if plateau uplift occurred soon after the India‐Asia collision in the Paleog...
The drivers of the evolution of the South Asian Monsoon remain widely debated. An intensification of monsoonal rainfall recorded in terrestrial and marine sediment archives from the earliest Miocene (23–20 million years ago (Ma)) is generally attributed to Himalayan uplift. However, Indian Ocean palaeorecords place the onset of a strong monsoon aro...
At the junction of greenhouse and icehouse climate states, the Eocene–Oligocene Transition (EOT) is a key moment in Cenozoic climate history. While it is associated with severe extinctions and biodiversity turnovers on land, the role of terrestrial climate evolution remains poorly resolved, especially the associated changes in seasonality. Some pal...
Plain Language Summary
Drylands in central Asia (approximately 40–50°N, 70–105°E) have a very long and complex evolutionary history during the Cenozoic. Previous modeling studies have mainly considered specific geological period and factors; however, few attempts have been made to quantify the role of different factors on the characteristics of cen...
Across the Miocene–Pliocene boundary (MPB; 5.3 million years ago, Ma), late Miocene cooling gave way to the early-to-middle Pliocene Warm Period. This transition, across which atmospheric CO 2 concentrations increased to levels similar to present, holds potential for deciphering regional climate responses in Asia—currently home to more than half of...
The Eocene–Oligocene Transition (EOT) marks the onset of the Antarctic glaciation and the switch from greenhouse to icehouse climates. However, the driving mechanisms and the precise timing of the EOT remain controversial mostly due to the lack of well-dated stratigraphic records, especially in continental environments. Here we present a cyclo-magn...
Recent studies suggest increasing sensitivity to orbital variations across the Eocene-Oligocene greenhouse to icehouse climate transition. However, climate simulations and paleoenvironmental studies mostly provide snapshots of the past climate, therefore overlooking the role of this short-term variability in driving major environmental changes and...
How and when the Pamir formed remains an open question. This study explores Pamir tectonics recorded in a sedimentary section in the eastern Tajik Basin. A prominent lithofacies change that has been recognized regionally is assigned to the middle Miocene (13.5 Ma based on preferred magnetostratigraphic correlation). Closely following this change, d...
Palm and palm-like (PPL) taxa have been widely reported at low-mid latitudes in Paleogene pollen assemblages. Yet their occurrence in the Paleogene of Myanmar remains poorly documented. Here we investigate the morphology of PPL pollen along a middle to upper Eocene sedimentary sequence in the Central Myanmar Basin and discuss their nearest living r...
A micrograph (a swamp fern spore 𝙂𝙚𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙤𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙨 𝙜𝙚𝙢𝙢𝙖𝙩𝙤𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙨 with affinity to 𝘾𝙮𝙘𝙡𝙤𝙥𝙝𝙤𝙧𝙪𝙨) in our paper ("𝗔𝘁 𝗮 𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱𝘀: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗘𝗼𝗰𝗲𝗻𝗲 𝗳𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗮 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝘆𝗮𝗻𝗺𝗮𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲", Huang et al. (2021), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.revpalbo.2021.104441) was selected as the cover image on the cover of volume 2...
The Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT) marks the onset of the Antarctic glaciation and the switch from greenhouse to icehouse climates. However, the driving mechanisms and the precise timing of the EOT remain controversial mostly due to the lack of well-dated stratigraphic records, especially in continental environments. Here we present a cyclo-magn...
Myanmar was shaped by the India–Asia collision, fusion of the Burma Terrane (BT) with Asia, and mountain building. Throughout this process new elevational gradients and habitats were formed, which affected the regional climate, but also forged new dispersal routes into Asia and India. In spite of its importance, the vegetation history of Myanmar is...
At the junction of greenhouse and icehouse climate phases, the Eocene-Oligocene Transition (EOT) is a key moment in the history of the Cenozoic climate. Yet, while it is associated with severe extinctions and biodiversity turnovers, terrestrial climate evolution remains poorly resolved. Paleobotanical and geochemical continental records suggest a m...
The geology of Myanmar was shaped by the India-Asia collision, fusion of the Burma Terrane (BT) with Asia, and mountain building. Throughout this process new elevational gradients and habitats were formed, which affected the regional climate and biodiversity, but also forged new dispersal routes into Asia and India. In spite of its
importance, the...
Asian mineral dust has been studied extensively for its role in affecting regional‐to global‐scale climate and for its deposits, which enable reconstructing Asian atmospheric circulation in the past. However, the timing and origin of the dust deposits remain debated. Numerous loess records have been reported across the Asian continent with ages var...
The onset of modern central Asian atmospheric circulation is traditionally linked to the interplay of surface uplift of the Mongolian and Tibetan-Himalayan orogens, retreat of the Paratethys sea from central Asia and Cenozoic global cooling. Although the role of these players has not yet been unravelled, the vast dust deposits of central China supp...
Magnetic parameters are widely used to indicate paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental conditions in sedimentary records. However, the relations between magnetic parameters and paleoclimate conditions are very different depending on the weathering degree. This study explores various multidisciplinary parameters across an intensely weathered red soil...
Sporopollenin is a highly resistant biopolymer that forms the outer wall of pollen and spores (sporomorphs). Recent research into sporopollenin chemistry has opened up a range of new avenues for palynological research, including chemotaxonomic classification of morphologically cryptic taxa. However, there have been limited attempts to directly inte...
Paleogeographic maps are essential tools for understanding Earth system dynamics. They provide boundary conditions for climate and geodynamic modelling, for analysing surface processes and biotic interactions. However, the temporal and spatial distribution of key features such as seaways and mountain belts that govern climate changes and biotic int...
Knowledge of the topographic evolution of the Tibetan Plateau is essential for understanding its construction and its influences on climate, environment, and biodiversity. Previous elevations estimated from stable isotope records from the Lunpola Basin in central Tibet, which indicate a high plateau since at least 35 Ma, are challenged by recent di...
Recognition of terrestrial dust in geological records is essential for reconstructing paleoenvironments and quantifying dust fluxes in the past. However, in contrast to eolian sands, silt-sized dust is difficult to recognize in pre-Quaternary records due to a lack of macroscopic features indicating eolian transport and mixing with alluvial sediment...
The principal objective of the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling project (HSPDP) is to study the relationship between climate and environmental change and the implications on human evolution in eastern Africa. For this purpose, HSPDP has recovered a 228 m core in the Chemeron Formation of the Baringo Basin (Kenya). The Chemeron Formation spans...
Global climate shifted to markedly warmer interglacial conditions across the “mid-Brunhes transition” (MBT, ~400 ka). However, a global MBT synthesis that spans marine and terrestrial evidence remains elusive, which limits our understanding of the role of the MBT in mid-Pleistocene human evolution. We synthesize Asian precipitation reconstructions...
The Burma Terrane (Myanmar) played an important role in the India‐Asia collision and moved over 2,000 km northward on the Indian Plate during the Cenozoic, before colliding with the Asian margin. However, the timing of this collision and its correlation to regional uplift phases, sedimentary provenance, and basin development remain poorly constrain...
The first major build-up of Antarctic glaciation occurred in two consecutive stages across the Eocene–Oligocene transition (EOT): the EOT-1 cooling event at ~34.1–33.9 Ma and the Oi-1 glaciation event at ~33.8–33.6 Ma. Detailed orbital-scale terrestrial environmental responses to these events remain poorly known. Here we present magnetic and geoche...
The origins and development of the arid and highly seasonal steppe-desert biome in Central Asia, the largest of its kind in the world, remain largely unconstrained by existing records. It is unclear how Cenozoic climatic, geological, and biological forces, acting at diverse spatial and temporal scales, shaped Central Asian ecosystems through time....
The Burma Terrane (Myanmar) played an important role in the India‐Asia collision and moved over 2000 km northward on the Indian Plate during the Cenozoic, before colliding with the Asian margin. However, the timing of this collision and its correlation to regional uplift phases, sedimentary provenance and basin development, remain poorly constraine...
Soil respiration (Rs), the production of carbon dioxide in soils, increases dramatically from deserts to forested ecosystems. Rs values thus provide a potential tool to identify past ecosystems if recorded in sedimentary archives. Here, we propose a quantitative method to reconstruct past Rs values from paleosols. This method reverses the soil pale...
The timing and mechanisms of the Cretaceous sea incursions into Central Asia are still poorly constrained. We provide a new chronostratigraphic framework based on biostratigraphy and magnetostratigraphy together with detailed paleoenvironmental analyses of Cretaceous records of the proto‐Paratethys Sea fluctuations in the Tajik and Tarim basins. Th...
The opening of the Drake Passage (DP) during the Cenozoic is a tectonic event of paramount importance for the development of modern ocean characteristics. Notably, it has been suggested that it exerts a primary role in the onset of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) formation, in the cooling of high‐latitude South Atlantic waters and in the in...
The Burma Terrane is a microplate at the eastern edge of the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen, the origin of which remains poorly understood. Its basement comprises metamorphic and igneous rocks forming the Wuntho-Popa Arc (WPA) and has been correlated with Tibetan, Gondwana or Transtethyan rocks. Yet, little is known about the magmatic history of the WPA....
Supplementary Material for Govin et al., Geology 2020
The Himalayan syntaxes, characterized by extreme rates of rock exhumation co-located with major trans-orogenic rivers, figure prominently in the debate on tectonic versus erosional forcing of exhumation. Both the mechanism and timing of rapid exhumation of the Namche Barwa massif in the eastern syntaxis remain controversial. It has been argued that...
In the Palaeogene, pollen assemblages at low and mid latitudes are characterized by abundant palm and palm-like (PPL) taxa. Although these taxa have been widely reported, their occurrence in the Palaeogene of Myanmar remains poorly documented. Here we report on the morphology of PPL pollen along a middle to upper Eocene sedimentary sequence in cent...
This dataset combines the oceanic and atmospheric outputs from various experiments modelling the Drake Passage opening during the Eocene (Toumoulin et al. 2020, Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology). It includes 4 simulations with a 40 Ma paleogeography, a 1120 ppm pCO2 and different depths of the Drake Passage (0, 100, 1000, 2500m). Experiments w...
The Cenozoic inception and development of the Asian monsoons remain unclear and have generated much debate, as several hypotheses regarding circulation patterns at work in Asia during the Eocene have been proposed in the few last decades. These include (a) the existence of modern-like monsoons since the early Eocene; (b) that of a weak South Asian...
The Pamir orogen in Central Asia has formed by the amalgamation of several Gondwana-derived terranes and their accretion to the southern Eurasian margin in the Mesozoic. Later on, the crust of the Pamir orogen was strongly deformed and uplifted as a result of the Cenozoic India-Asia collision. The deformation of the Pamir orogen, which resulted in...
The ongoing surge of international research on Asian Climate and Tectonics enables to better assess interactions between forcing mechanisms (global climate, India-Asia collision, Tibetan Plateau growth) and paleoenvironmental changes (monsoons, aridification), land-sea distribution, surface processes, paleobiogeographic evolution and the global car...
The paleogeographic evolution of the India-Asia collision and the resulting formation of the Himalayan orogen remain an intensely debated topic. A variety of disputed models propose different collision ages for the numerous terranes incorporated into the collision with variable paleolatitudes and tectonic rotations that can be constrained using pal...
The Yellow River (YR) is one of the longest and most sediment-laden rivers in the world. However, the timing and mechanism of the integration of upstream and downstream reaches of the YR is still debated, with estimates ranging from >34 Ma to ~0.15 Ma. Here we address this debate by studying the detrital-zircon age spectra from three boreholes that...
The timing and mechanism of formation of the Tibet Plateau remain elusive, and even the present‐day structure of the Tibetan lithosphere is hardly resolved, due to conflicting interpretations of the geophysical data. We show here that significant advances in our understanding of this orogeny could be achieved through a better assessment of the comp...
The Cenozoic onset and development of the Asian monsoons remain unclear and have generated much debate, as several hypotheses regarding circulation patterns at work in Asia during the Eocene have been proposed in the last decades. These include a) the existence of modern-like monsoons since the early Eocene; b) that of a weak South Asian Monsoon (S...
The Baringo-Tugen Hills-Barsemoi 2013 drillcore (BTB13), acquired as part of the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project, recovered 228 m of fluvio-lacustrine sedimentary rocks and tuffs spanning a ~3.29–2.56 Ma interval of the highly fossiliferous and hominin-bearing Chemeron Formation, Tugen Hills, Kenya. Here we present a Bayesian stratigr...
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Convergence between the Indian and Asian plates has reshaped large parts of Asia, changing regional climate and biodiversity, yet geodynamic models fundamentally diverge on how convergence was accommodated since the India–Asia collision. Here we report palaeomagnetic data from the Burma Terrane, which is at the eastern edge of the collision zone an...
In the current context of climate change, understanding warmer climate's functioning and response to pCO2 forcing is becoming essential. From the Permian to the Eocene (ca 260 Ma to 34 Ma), Earth has experienced a greenhouse climate state. It is defined by globally high pCO2 and annual temperatures, and by the absence of permanent ice-sheets. In th...
An understanding of the depositional environment and paleogeography of the Siwalik foreland basin are crucial in interpreting the basin configuration, sediment transport pathways and its evolutionary history. This study examines the sedimentology of the Siwalik successionof the Kameng River valley, Arunachal Himalaya, northeastern India. The facies...
The Baringo-Tugen-Barsemoi 2013 drillcore (BTB13), acquired as part of the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project, recovered 228 m of fluviolacustrine sedimentary rocks and tuffs spanning a similar to 3.29-2.56 Ma interval of the highly fossiliferous and hominin-bearing Chemeron Formation, Tugen Hills, Kenya. Here we present a Bayesian strat...
Significance
Humans are distinguished from all other primates by their reliance on tool use. When this uniquely human feature began is debated. Evidence of tool use in human ancestors now extends almost 3.3 Ma and becomes prevalent only after 2.6 Ma with the Oldowan. Here, we report a new Oldowan locality (BD 1) that dates prior to 2.6 Ma. These ea...
The proto‐Paratethys Sea covered a vast area extending from the Mediterranean Tethys to the Tarim Basin in western China during Cretaceous and early Paleogene. Climate modelling and proxy studies suggest that Asian aridification has been governed by westerly moisture modulated by fluctuations of the proto‐Paratethys Sea. Transgressive and regressiv...
The proto‐Paratethys Sea covered a vast area extending from the Mediterranean
Tethys to the Tarim Basin in western China during Cretaceous and early Paleogene.
Climate modelling and proxy studies suggest that Asian aridification has been governed
by westerly moisture modulated by fluctuations of the proto‐Paratethys Sea.
Transgressive and regressiv...
Paleogeographic reconstructions of terranes can greatly benefit from the provenance analysis of sediments. A series of Cenozoic basins provide key sedimentary archives for investigating the growth of the Tibetan Plateau, yet the provenance of the sediments in these basins has never been constrained robustly. Here we report sedimentary petrological...
Fossil palm pollen referred to genera such as Longapertites, Spinizonocolpites, Palmaepollenites, and Dicolpopollis, and the palm-like Proxapertites had a very widespread distribution during the Paleogene. Here we investigate the fossil palm pollen within the composition of the latest middle to earliest late Eocene Yaw Formation in the Kalewa regio...
The Himalayan-Tibetan orogen is generally considered as the archetype for continent-continent collisional systems , being the result of the accretion of numerous terranes including notably the India-Asia collision. However, the geodynamic evolution of the India-Asia collision remains a controversial issue, as illustrated by the widely different com...
The Pamir orogen formed and uplifted in response to the amalgamation of the Gondwanan terranes in the Mesozoic followed by the Cenozoic India-Asia collision. The Pamir growth is held responsible for the disappearance of a large epicontinental sea and the desertification of Central Asia. More than 400 km of convergence has been inferred in the Pamir...
The establishment and evolution of the Asian monsoons and arid interior have been linked to uplift of the Tibetan Plateau, retreat of the inland proto-Paratethys Sea and global cooling during the Cenozoic. However, the respective role of these driving mechanisms remains poorly constrained. This is partly due to a lack of continental records coverin...
The northward indentation of the Pamir salient into the Tarim basin at the western syntaxis of the India‐Asia collision zone is the focus of controversial models linking lithospheric to surface and atmospheric processes. Here we report on tectonic events recorded in the most complete and best‐dated sedimentary sequences from the western Tarim basin...
The fall into the Oligocene icehouse is marked by a steady decline in global temperature with punctuated cooling at the Eocene-Oligocene transition, both of which are well documented in the marine realm. However, the chronology and mechanisms of cooling on land remain unclear. Here, we use clumped isotope thermometry on northeastern Tibetan contine...