Birth of the Pearl River at 30 Ma: Evidence from sedimentary records in the northern South China Sea

Late Oligocene Formation of the Pearl River Triggered by the Opening of the South China Sea

“…However, the mechanism of this late Oligocene drainage expansion of the paleo-Pearl River remains poorly constrained. Several investigations attributed this event to the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau (Cao et al, 2018;He et al, 2020;Jin et al, 2022), as similar Oligocene drainage network reorganization has been recognized in the other large rivers originating from SE Tibet, including the Red and Yangtze Rivers (Clift (Cao et al, 2018) showing the locations and sample names of modern sand samples. The dashed line represents the possible boundary between the Yangtze Craton and Cathaysia Block (G. Zhao & Cawood, 2012).…”

“…However, the mechanism of this late Oligocene drainage expansion of the paleo‐Pearl River remains poorly constrained. Several investigations attributed this event to the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau (Cao et al., 2018; He et al., 2020; Jin et al., 2022), as similar Oligocene drainage network reorganization has been recognized in the other large rivers originating from SE Tibet, including the Red and Yangtze Rivers (Clift et al., 2006, 2020; Zheng et al., 2013). However, other studies have indicated that the opening of the South China Sea also influenced the progressive headward erosion of the major rivers in southeastern China (Lan et al., 2016; C. Liu et al., 2022; Z. Zhang, Daly, Tian, et al., 2022; Z. Zhang, Daly, Yan, et al., 2022).…”

“…However, the mechanism of the late Oligocene drainage expansion of the Pearl River remains poorly understood. Surface uplift of the SE Tibetan Plateau has been suggested as the primary factor influencing the initiation of the Pearl River (Cao et al., 2018; He et al., 2020; Jin et al., 2022). However, a late Oligocene initiation of the Pearl River is not synchronous with large‐scale fluvial capture events in the eastern Tibetan Plateau.…”

“…As one of the largest fluvial systems flowing into the South China Sea, the Pearl River (Figure 1) delivers large volumes of sediment into the South China Sea (e.g., Garzanti et al., 2021; H. Wang, 1985). As such, it has attracted significant research interest and its development has been attributed to the uplift of southeastern Tibet associated with the India‐Asia collision, to the evolution of the Asian monsoon, as well as to formation of the South China Sea (Cao et al., 2018; He et al., 2020; Jin et al., 2022; C. Liu et al., 2022; Zhang, Daly, Tian, et al., 2022).…”

Global Cooling‐Driven Summer Monsoon Weakening in South China Across the Eocene‐Oligocene Transition

“…(b) Shipboard pass‐through magnetic susceptibility (MS) (Jian et al., 2018) and mean grain size of the terrigenous sediments. (c) χ lf ; (d) χ fd %; (e) ARM; (f) SIRM; (g) HIRM; (h) ARM/SIRM ratio; (i) S‐ratio; (j) L‐ratio; (k) Nd isotopic composition (εNd, Jin et al., 2022); (l) Ht/Gt ratio. The dotted lines in the upper part of (i, j) show the changes in the magnetic composition.…”