Yani Najman

• Lancaster University

Extensive ice coverage largely prevents investigations of Antarctica’s unglaciated past. Knowledge about environmental and tectonic development before large-scale glaciation, however, is important for understanding the transition into the modern icehouse world. We report geochronological and sedimentological data from a drill core from the Amundsen...

Regional variations in the evolution of the Tibetan plateau has important implications for our understanding of crustal deformation processes. The evolution of the NW margin of the plateau and its transition to the Pamir to the west is one under-studied region. We focus on this region with a multi-technique detrital study of two sedimentary section...

Provenance tools, particularly detrital zircon U–Pb analysis, have been widely employed to test drainage network evolution in southeast Tibet and its linkage with the growth of the Tibetan Plateau. Numerous provenance studies have been conducted on the sediments in the paleo‐Yangtze and paleo‐Red River drainage basins. Nevertheless, it is still hot...

For sedimentary archives to be used as a record of hinterland evolution, the factors affecting the archive must be known. In addition to tectonics, a number of factors, such as changes in climate and paleodrainage, as well as the degree of diagenesis, influence basin sediments. The Indus River delta-fan system of South-Central Asia records a histor...

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 West Burma Terrane (WBT) is a small terrane bounded to the east by the Asian Sibumasu Block and to the west by the Indo‐Burman Ranges (IBR), the latter being an exhumed accretionary prism that formed during subduction of Indian oceanic lithosphere beneath Asia. Understanding the geological history of the WBT is important for reconstruction of t...

The stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is threatened by the incursion of warm Circumpolar Deepwater which flows southwards via cross-shelf troughs towards the coast there melting ice shelves. However, the onset of this oceanic forcing on the development and evolution of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet remains poorly understood. Here, we use sin...

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...

The Himalaya, the Earth's largest active orogen, produces a deep but relatively unexplored foreland basin by loading the Indian Plate. Newly available two-dimensional seismic data (~5180 line km) spanning 900 km of the Nepali lowlands allow mapping and interpretation of several regional subsurface markers in two-way-travel time and estimated depth....

The India‐Asia collision zone in Ladakh, northwest India, records a sequence of tectono‐thermal events in the interior of the Himalayan orogen following the intercontinental collision between India and Asia in early Cenozoic time. We present zircon fission track, and zircon and apatite (U‐Th)/He thermochronometric data from the Indus Basin sediment...

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...

Significance The Himalayan mountain belt results from continuing convergence between the Indian Plate and Asia. Damaging earthquakes occur on major thrust faults north of the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT). To the south, the Ganga foreland basin is typically described as undeformed. We show that active thrust and strike-slip faults, with accumulated sli...

Plain Language Summary How the Tibetan Plateau evolved during India‐Asia convergence and collision is notoriously challenging to decipher. Use of sedimentary records to date periods of tectonic activity is a popular approach, yet distinguishing between tectonic versus climate signals in sediment records can be challenging. The anisotropy of magneti...

The mid-Cretaceous period was one of the warmest intervals of the past 140 million years1–5, driven by atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of around 1,000 parts per million by volume6. In the near absence of proximal geological records from south of the Antarctic Circle, it is disputed whether polar ice could exist under such environmental conditions...

Available online xxxx Editor: J.P. Avouac Keywords: magnetostratigraphy convergence rate India-Asia collision Tibetan Plateau paleomagnetism Models that aim to explain the causes of the significant Indian plate motion acceleration around 70 Ma, and the subsequent deceleration around 52 Ma predict different scenarios regarding crustal shortening of...

The Indo-Burman Ranges (IBR) are a mountain range comprised of Mesozoic-Cenozoic rocks which run the length of Western Myanmar, extending into India and Bangladesh; to the west lies the Indian Ocean, and to the east lies the Central Myanmar Basin (CMB) along which the Irrawaddy River flows. The IBR are considered to be an accretionary prism, develo...

The full research project is pending in an upcoming EPSL volume... cheers to Yani!

The Bengal Fan provides a Neogene record of Eastern and Central Himalaya exhu-mation. We provide the first detrital thermo-chronological study (apatite and rutile U-Pb, mica Ar-Ar, zircon fission track) of sediment samples collected during International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 354 to the mid-Bengal Fan. Our data from rutile and zi...

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...

Understanding the tectonics that gave rise to the formation of Tibet is critical to our understanding of crustal deformation processes. The unusual geomorphology of the drainage basins of East Asia's major rivers has been proposed to be the result of either (1) distortion and attenuation of antecedent drainages as India indents into Asia, which can...

The Namche Barwa massif, occupying the eastern syntaxis of the Himalaya, is characterized by young metamorphism, rapid and highly localized exhumation, and extreme river-incision and modern erosion rates. Both the timing and mechanism of rapid exhumation in the massif, as well as the potential links with the evolution of drainage patterns in the ea...

A well-developed Late Eocene to Miocene unconformity, termed the Base Miocene Unconformity (BMU), is found throughout the intraplate basins of north-western India, and has previously been ascribed to Himalayan tectonics. This hypothesis is investigated by first describing the nature and age of the BMU in the northwest Indian intraplate basins, and...

The Siwalik sedimentary rocks of the Himalayan foreland basin preserve a record of Himalayan orogenesis, paleo-drainage evolution, and erosion. This study focuses on the still poorly studied easternmost Himalaya Siwalik record located directly downstream of the Namche Barwa syntaxis. We use luminescence, palaeomagnetism, magnetostratigraphy, and ap...

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

The Namche Barwa massif in the eastern Himalayan syntaxis is characterized by very rapid exhumation and provides a significant proportion of the sediment flux carried by the Brahmaputra River. We present new detrital zircon fission-track (ZFT) and muscovite 40Ar/39Ar (MAr) data from modern sediments of rivers draining the eastern Himalaya. The cool...

The Hindu Kush–Kohistan–Karakoram region is critical to understanding the long-term accretion history of the south Asian margin pre- and post-India–Asia collision and the impact of these collisions on the development of high topography. However, knowledge about this region remains incomplete owing to sparse studies. Here, we present a study compris...

We measure the oxygen and hydrogen stable isotope composition of authigenic clays from Himalayan foreland sediments (Siwalik Group), and from present day small stream waters in eastern Bhutan to explore the impact of uplift of the Shillong Plateau on rain shadow formation over the Himalayan foothills. Stable isotope data from authigenic clay minera...

The Himalayan-sourced Ganges-Brahmaputra river system and the deep-sea Bengal Fan represent Earth's largest sediment-dispersal system. Here we present detrital zircon U-Pb provenance data from Miocene to middle Pleistocene Bengal Fan turbidites, and evaluate the influence of allogenic forcing vs. autogenic processes on signal propagation from the H...

The Nile is generally regarded as the longest river in the world. Knowledge of the timing of the Nile's initiation as a major river is important to a number of research questions. For example, the timing of the river's establishment as a catchment of continental proportions can be used to document surface uplift of its Ethiopian upland drainage, wi...

This Nile Delta case study provides quantitative information on a process that we must understand and consider in full before attempting provenance interpretation of ancient clastic wedges. Petrographic and heavy-mineral data on partly lithified sand, silt, and mud samples cored from the up to 8.5 km-thick post-Eocene succession of the offshore Nil...

The Shillong Plateau (northeastern India) constitutes the only significant topography in the Himalayan foreland. Knowledge of its surface uplift history is key to understanding topographic development and unraveling tectonic-climate-topographic coupling in the eastern Himalaya. We use the sedimentary record of the Himalayan foreland basin north of...

In response to the general lack of sufficiently abundant and high quality rutile UPb reference materials for in situ geochronology, we have characterised two new potential rutile ~ 1.8 Ga reference materials (Sugluk-4 and PCA-S207) from granulite facies belts of the Canadian Shield, namely the northern Cape Smith Belt of Quebec and the Snowbird Tec...

The Himalaya has a major influence on global and regional climate, in particular on the Asian monsoon system. The foreland basin of the Himalaya contains a record of tectonics and paleoclimate since the Miocene. Previous work on the evolution of vegetation and climate has focused on the central and western Himalaya, where a shift from C3 to C4 vege...

Studying past weathering regimes is important for a better understanding of the influence of climate on weathering, erosion, and runoff. The Himalayan foreland basin contains a record of tectonics and paleoclimate since Miocene times. Spanning the entire mountain range, the Mio-Pliocene detrital Siwalik Group allows studies to directly compare the...

River networks regulate mass fluxes and modulate the topography produced by tectonic forces, transporting critical information downstream in the foreland basin. River sediments contain an inventory of the characteristics of the source rocks eroded in the hinterland of a drainage basin. Thus, detrital thermochronology can be used as a tool to infer...

River networks regulate mass fluxes and modulate the topography produced by tectonic forces, transporting critical information downstream in the foreland basin. River sediments contain an inventory of the characteristics of the source rocks eroded in the hinterland of a drainage basin. Thus, detrital thermochronology can be used as a tool to infer...

It is crucial to understand lateral differences in paleo-climate and weathering in order to fully understand the evolution of the Himalayan mountain belt. While many studies have focused on the western and central Himalaya, the eastern Himalaya remains poorly studied with regard to paleoclimate and past weathering history. Here we present a multi-p...

River networks regulate mass fluxes and modulate the topography produced by tectonic forces, transporting critical information downstream in the foreland basin. River sediments contain an inventory of the characteristics of the source rocks eroded in the hinterland of a drainage basin. Thus, detrital thermochronology can be used as a tool to infer...

The Himalayan orogen is a type example of continent–continent collision. Knowledge of the timing of India–Asia collision is critical to the calculation of the amount of convergence that must have been accommodated and thus to models of crustal deformation. Sedimentary rocks on the Indian plate near the suture zone can be used to constrain the time...

This research uses analyses from Nile catchment rivers, wadis, dunes and bedrocks to constrain the geological history of NE Africa and document influences on the composition of sediment reaching the Nile delta. Our data show evolution of the North African crust, highlighting phases in the development of the Arabian–Nubian Shield and amalgamation of...

The Shillong Plateau is a unique basement-cored uplift in the foreland of the eastern Himalaya that accommodates part of the India-Eurasia convergence since the late Miocene. It was uplifted in the late Pliocene to 1600m, potentially inducing regional climatic perturbations by orographically condensing part of the Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) precip...

International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 354 to 8°N in the Bay of Bengal drilled a seven-site, 320 km long transect across the Bengal Fan. Three deep-penetration and an additional four shallow holes give a spatial overview of the primarily turbiditic deposi-tional system that comprises the Bengal deep-sea fan. Sediments originate from Himal...

The Pamirs represent the indented westward continuation of the northern margin of the Tibetan plateau, dividing the Tarim and Tajik basins. Their evolution may be a key factor influencing aridification of the Asian interior, yet the tectonics of the Pamir Salient are poorly understood. We present a provenance study of the Aertashi section, a Paleog...

The eastern termination of the Himalayan orogen forms a structural syntaxis that is characterised by young (from 10 to <1Ma) mineral growth and cooling ages that document Late Miocene to Pleistocene structural, metamorphic, igneous and exhumation events. This region is a steep antiformal and in part domal structure that folds the suture zone betwee...

The distribution of detrital mineral cooling age signals in modern river sediments yields useful constraints about the patterns of exhumation in an active collisional belt and it can provide an average of the exhumation signal of the region (Brewer et al., 2006). The East Himalayan syntaxis (Namche Barwa) is considered to be one of the most rapidly...

The exceptional evolution of the Himalayan syntaxes remains debated and various tectonic and erosional mechanisms have been proposed. The syntaxes have been subjected to anomalously young (10 Ma) high grade metamorphism, melting, and unusually high exhumation rates (up to 10 mm/yr), whereas Early Miocene peak metamorphism and exhumation rates of ~2...

The Shillong Plateau is the only raised topography (up to 2000 m elevation) in the Himalayan foreland. It is proposed to have had a major influence on strain partitioning and thus tectonics in the Eastern Himalaya. Additionally, its position on the trajectory of the summer monsoon means it has influenced the regional climate, with reduced erosion r...

Supplementary Item 2: Methods

Supplementary Item 2: Methods

International Ocean Discovery Expedition 354 to 8°N in the Bay of Bengal drilled a seven site, 320 km long transect across the Bengal Fan. Three deep-penetration and an additional four shallow holes give a spatial overview of the primarily turbiditic depositional system that comprises the Bengal deep-sea fan. Sediments originate from Himalayan rive...

The Himalayan orogen provides a type example on which a number of models of the causes and consequences of crustal deformation are based and it has been suggested that it is the site of a variety of feedbacks between tectonics and erosion. Within the broader orogen, fluvial drainages partly reflect surface uplift, different climatic zones and a res...

In response to the general lack of sufficiently abundant and high quality rutile UPb reference materials for in situ geochronology, we have characterised two new potential rutile ~ 1.8 Ga reference materials (Sugluk-4 and PCA-S207) from granulite facies belts of the Canadian Shield, namely the northern Cape Smith Belt of Quebec and the Snowbird Tec...

Subduction complexes large enough to be exposed subaerially and to become significant sources of terrigenous detritus are formed by tectonic accretion above trenches choked with thick sections of remnant-ocean turbidites. They thus need to be connected along strike to a large Alpine-type or Andean-type orogen, where huge volumes of orogenic detritu...

Knowledge of the exhumation of the Lesser Himalaya (LH) is important to the development of models of crustal deformation and to testing whether erosion of the LH has contributed to changes in ocean geochemistry, (e.g. Pierson-Wickmann et al 2000; Chesley et al 2000). Since most of the LH is unmetamorphosed, using bedrock to determine the timing of...

Fluvial drainages impact on, and are impacted by, surface uplift, exhumation and strain, and thus an investigation of their evolution provides a key to understanding crustal deformation processes and erosion-tectonic-climate interactions. The peculiar fluvial drainage configuration of the eastern syntaxial region in the Himalaya has been interprete...

Rutile is an accessory mineral commonly found in the heavy mineral suite of detrital rocks due to its stability during the sedimentary processes. This mineral originates mainly in medium- to high-grade metamorphic and some igneous rocks and similarly to zircon and other U-bearing minerals can be dated by the U-Pb method. Nevertheless, there are sti...

[1] This study investigates processes of sediment generation in equatorial central Africa. An original, complete and integrated mineralogical-geochemical database on silt-sized sediments derived from different parent rocks (basalt, granite, gneiss, metapsammite, sandstone) along the East African Rift from 5°S in Tanzania to 5°N in Sudan is presente...

The Cenozoic sedimentary succession of Bangladesh provides an archive of Himalayan erosion. However, its potential as an archive is currently hampered by a poor lithostratigaphic framework with limited age control. We focus on the Hatia Trough of the Bengal Basin and the adjacent fold belt of the Chittagong Hill Tracts which forms the outermost par...

In the Himalaya, the unusual fluvial drainage configuration of the eastern syntaxial region (Namche Barwa) has been interpreted either as distorted drainage resulting from crustal shortening (due to India-Asia convergence) and lateral extrusion of crustal material, or as the result of river capture (of the Yarlung Tsangpo by the Brahmaputra river)...

Deposited within the Indus–Tsangpo suture zone, the Cenozoic Indus Basin sedimentary rocks have been interpreted to hold evidence that may constrain the timing of India–Eurasia collision, a conclusion challenged by data presented here. The Eurasian derived 50.8–51 Ma Chogdo Formation was previously considered to overlie Indian Plate marine sediment...

A range of ages have been proposed for the timing of India-Asia collision; the range to some extent reflects different definitions of collision and methods used to date it. In this paper we discuss three approaches that have been used to constrain the time of collision: the time of cessation of marine facies, the time of the first arrival of Asian...

This study reassesses the stratigraphy, sedimentology, and provenance of the Indus Basin sedimentary rocks, deposited within the Indus Tsangpo Suture Zone (ITSZ) during the early phases of India-Eurasia collision. Using field observations, biostratigraphy, and petrographic and isotopic analyses we create a paleodepositional reconstruction within th...

Editor: M.L. Delaney Keywords: sedimentary geochemistry sedimentary petrology settling equivalence selective entrainment placer sands opaque minerals REE-bearing minerals Eu anomaly Himalaya This study investigates the natural processes that control concentration of detrital minerals and consequently chemical elements in river sand. The novelty of...

Revert field A combination of sediment petrography, detrital zircon U-Pb, and fission-track dating is used to show that provenance of the Paleogene sedimentary rocks exposed in the Makran region of southern Iran and the Katawaz basin of Pakistan is consistent with a source from the nascent western Himalaya and associated magmatic arc. Results from...

Provenance tools are applicable to many problems in sedimentary geology as they help unravel the tectonic and metamorphic history of the hinterland and provide insights into the erosional pathways and origins of sediments. In many cases it is more appropriate to use single grain approaches as opposed to bulk sediment methods in order to discover th...

The age and degree of diachroneity of India-Asia collision is critical to construction of models of orogenesis and to understanding the causes of spatial variations in Himalayan evolution along strike. The age of collision is quoted between ~65-34 Ma (Jaeger et al 1989; Aitchison et al 2007) and the degree of dichroneity is considered negligible (S...

A combination of sediment petrography, detrital zircon U-Pb and fission track dating are used to show that provenance of the Paleogene sedimentary rocks exposed in the Makran of southern Iran and Katawaz basin of Pakistan is consistent with a source from the nascent western Himalaya and associated magmatic arc and thus provide a new repository for...

This study investigates the natural processes that control concentration of detrital minerals and consequently chemical elements in river sand. The novelty of our approach consists in the systematic integration of detailed textural, petrographical, mineralogical and chemical data, and in the quantitative description and modeling of relationships am...

The age and degree of diachroneity of India-Asia collision is critical to construction of models of orogenesis and to understanding the causes of spatial variations in Himalayan evolution along strike. The age of collision is quoted between 65-34 Ma (Jaeger et al 1989; Aitchison et al 2007) and the degree of dichroneity is considered negligible (Se...

1] This research presents the first multitechnique provenance study of the Siwalik Group in the Himalayan foreland basin in India, using the Jawalamukhi section, magnetostratigraphically dated at 13–5 Ma. Combined with provenance data from a Dharamsala Formation sedimentary section (21–13 Ma) located close by, it forms the longest temporally contin...

In order to use the detrital record as an archive of hinterland evolution, we need to understand the erosional response to tectonics. Collision of India and Asia at ca 50 Ma [1 and refs therein] resulted in the subsequent development of the Himalayan orogen. What was the erosional response to this event? Most basins into which Himalayan detritus ma...

Closure of Tethys marks initiation of collision between India and Asia, and the start of Himalayan orogenesis. A clear understanding of when this occurred is paramount to understanding the tectonic and denudational processes that have occurred since collision. A number of methods and datasets have been used to constrain the initiation of collision,...

The Indus Group is a Tertiary aged sequence composed of marine and terrestrial sedimentary rocks which were deposited in an evolving late-forearc to intermontane basin setting during the closure of Neo-Tethys and onset of India-Asia collision (Brookfield and Andrews-Speed 1984, Van Haver 1984, Searle 1990, Sinclair and Jaffey 2001, Clift et al. 200...

DOI = 10.3126/hjs.v5i7.1266 Himalayan Journal of Sciences Vol.5(7) (Special Issue) 2008 p.64

DOI = 10.3126/hjs.v5i7.1288 Himalayan Journal of Sciences Vol.5(7) (Special Issue) 2008 p.94

A knowledge of Himalayan erosion history is critical to understanding crustal deformation processes, and the proposed link between the orogen's erosion and changes in both global climate and ocean geochemistry. The most commonly quoted age of India–Asia collision is ~50 Ma, yet the record of Paleogene Himalayan erosion is scant — either absent or o...