No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

[1] The chemical index of alteration (CIA) and elemental ratios that are sensitive to chemical weathering, such as Ca/Ti, Na/Ti, Al/Ti, Al/Na, Al/K, and La/Sm, were analyzed for detrital sediments at Ocean Drilling Program Site 1148 from the northern South China Sea to reveal information of chemical weathering in the source regions during the early Miocene. High CIAvalues of $80, coupled with high Al/Ti and Al/Na and low Na/Ti and Ca/Ti, are observed for the sediments at $23 Ma, indicating a high chemical weathering intensity in the north source region, i.e., south China. This was followed by gradual decreases in Al/Ti, Al/Na, La/Sm, and Al/K ratios, as well as the CIAvalues, and increases in Ca/Ti and Na/Ti ratios. These records together with other paleoclimate proxies, such as black carbon d 13 C and benthic foraminifer d 18 O, give reliable information on the climate changes in south China. Our results show that the climate in south China was warm and humid in the early Miocene ($23 Ma) according to the chemical weathering records. The humidity in south China decreased from the early Miocene to Present with several fluctuations centering at approximately 15.7 Ma, 8.4 Ma, and 2.5 Ma, coincident with the global cooling since the middle Miocene. These climate changes implied that the summer east Asian monsoon has dramatically affected south China in the early Miocene, whereas the influence of the summer monsoon on this region has decreased continuously since that time, probably because of the intensification of the winter monsoon. Such an evolution for the east Asian monsoon is different from that for the Indian monsoon.

The early rift sedimentation history of the South China Sea is still not well understood due to restricted borehole coverage of the Paleogene strata and lack of reliable stratigraphic dating. We use detrital zircon U‐Pb geochronology to explore the source‐to‐sink characteristics of syn‐rift sequences in the northern South China Sea. The results reveal significant intrabasinal provenances in addition to the well‐perceived terrigenous supply from the north. The Dongsha Uplift is considered to account for the dominance of the Early Cretaceous zircons in the Eocene samples. The Lower Oligocene sediments in the Qiongdongnan Basin could have been sourced from Hainan Island and local uplifts, but their distinction cannot be confirmed by the U‐Pb age spectra. Contemporary sediments in the northern Pearl River Mouth Basin were most likely transported from southeastern South China with well‐rounded zircon grains showing U‐Pb age similarity to those from the northeastern tributaries of the Pearl River. By contrast, intrabasinal sources from the west and east are suggested to have contributed the infill of the southern part of the Pearl River Mouth Basin based on generally euhedral zircon shapes. These sedimentary source patterns appear to change very little in the Oligocene northern South China Sea. However, the newly detected Neoproterozoic zircons in the Upper Oligocene sediments from borehole L21 tend to indicate a southern source. The episodic and diachronic nature of rifting and erosion processes in the early South China Sea is the cause of complex patterns in the Paleogene provenance history.

No abstract

No abstract

A significant geologic event occurred on the Oligocene/Miocene boundary at 23.8 Ma in the northern South China Sea, which is named the Baiyun (白云) movement in this article. This event strongly affected not only the South China Sea, but also East Asia. After the Baiyun event, the ridge of seafloor spreading of the South China Sea jumped southward and rotated counterclockwise, and a strong subsidence occurred in the Baiyun sag of the Pearl River Mouth basin. The shelf break shifted suddenly from the south to the north of the Baiyun sag, and the deposition environment in this sag changed from continental shelf with neritic deposition to continental slope with deep-water deposition. Sediment geochemistry study indicated that the Baiyun event played a key role in the rapid change of sediment provenance for the Pearl River Mouth basin. Between 32 and 23.8 Ma, the source of sediments was mainly from the granites in South China, while after 23.8 Ma some sediments might have come from the eastern Himalaya, as the Pearl River drainage extended westward after the uplift of Tibet since that time. The Baiyun event led to a great change in the drainage framework of the paleoPearl River, sediment types and the depositional environments in the Pearl River Mouth basin, and relative sea level of the northern South China Sea, as well as sedimentation and hydrocarbon accumulation in the area.