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Late Cretaceous‐Cenozoic Exhumation History of the Lüliang Mountains, North China Craton: Constraint from Fission‐track Thermochronology
Author(s) -
LI Xiaoming,
SONG Yougui
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
acta geologica sinica ‐ english edition
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.444
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1755-6724
pISSN - 1000-9515
DOI - 10.1111/j.1755-6724.2010.00145.x
Subject(s) - fission track dating , thermochronology , denudation , geology , craton , zircon , cretaceous , tectonics , cenozoic , geothermal gradient , paleontology , closure temperature , fission , mesozoic , apatite , geochemistry , nuclear physics , structural basin , physics , neutron
The Lüliang Mountains, located in the North China Craton, is a relatively stable block, but it has experienced uplift and denudation since the late Mesozoic. We hence aim to explore its time and rate of the exhumation by the fission‐track method. The results show that, no matter what type rocks are, the pooled ages of zircon and apatite fission‐track range from 60.0 to 93.7 Ma and 28.6 to 43.3 Ma, respectively; all of the apatite fission‐track length distributions are unimodal and yield a mean length of ∼13 μm; and the thermal history modeling results based on apatite fission‐track data indicate that the time‐temperature paths exhibit similar patterns and the cooling has been accelerated for each sample since the Pliocene (c.5 Ma). Therefore, we can conclude that a successive cooling, probably involving two slow (during c.75–35 Ma and 35–5 Ma) and one rapid (during c.5 Ma‐0 Ma) cooling, has occurred through the exhumation of the Lüliang Mountains since the late Cretaceous. The maximum exhumation is more than 5 km under a steady‐state geothermal gradient of 35°C/km. Combined with the tectonic setting, this exhumation may be the resultant effect from the surrounding plate interactions, and it has been accelerated since c.5 Ma predominantly due to the India‐Eurasia collision.