No High Tibetan Plateau Until the Neogene

Farnsworth, Alexander; Su, Tao; Spicer, Robert A.; Huang, Junhua; Wu, Fuli; Liu, Jia; Li, Shufeng; Xing, Yao‐Wu; Huang, Yong‐Jiang; Tang, He; Xu, Cong‐Li; Zhao, Fan; Srivastava, Gurav; Deng, Tao; Valdes, Paul J.

doi:10.1130/abs/2018am-319129

Geological Society of America Abstracts With Programs

2018

DOI: 10.1130/abs/2018am-319129

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No High Tibetan Plateau Until the Neogene

Alexander Farnsworth¹,

Tao Su²,

Robert A. Spicer³

et al.

Abstract: The Late Paleogene surface height and paleoenvironment for the core area of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) remain critically unresolved. Here, we report the discovery of the youngest well-preserved fossil palm leaves from Tibet. They were recovered from the Late Paleogene (Chattian), ca. 25.5 ± 0.5 million years, paleolake sediments within the Lunpola Basin (32.033°N, 89.767°E), central QTP at a present elevation of 4655 m. The anatomy of palms renders them intrinsically susceptible to freezing, imposing up… Show more

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Cited by 2 publications

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Topographic Response of Hinterland Basins in Tibet to the India–Asia Convergence: 3D Thermo-Mechanical Modeling

et al. 2022

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A number of basins have developed in Tibet since the early stages of the India–Asia collision, and now, they have become integral parts of the Tibetan Plateau. Geophysical and geochemical data reveal that these basins are currently characterized either by strong or weak basements. However, it remains unclear how these hinterland basins evolved during the India–Asia collision and how they affected the post-collisional growth of the Tibetan Plateau. Here, we use 3D thermo-mechanical simulations to investigate the topographic response of a strength-varying hinterland basin imbedded in an orogenic plateau under the horizontal compression condition. Our results show that a strong hinterland basin experiences little deformation and develops into a lowland with respect to the surrounding plateau at the early stages of the collision. The lowland gradually shrinks and survives in the interior of the plateau for ∼30–40 Myr before merging into the plateau. In contrast, a weak hinterland basin uplifts soon after the initial collision and develops into a highland after ∼20 Myr of convergence. Topographic analysis reveals that the strong hinterland basin experiences an evident elevation drop after ∼20–30 Myr of convergence, followed by a rapid uplift. After compiling the paleoelevation data, we proposed that the Tibetan Plateau experienced a four-stage surface uplift, which was characterized by 1) the Gangdese and central watershed highlands isolating three lowlands during the Eocene, 2) the central lowland experiencing an elevation drop of ∼2000 m during the Oligocene, 3) the central lowland suffering a rapid uplift and merging into the Tibetan Plateau in the Early Miocene, and 4) the south and north lowlands rising and developing into a plateau similar to the modern Tibetan Plateau since the Middle Miocene.

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Topographic Response of Hinterland Basins in Tibet to the India–Asia Convergence: 3D Thermo-Mechanical Modeling

et al. 2022

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Seed traits linked to differential survival of plants during the Cretaceous/Paleogene impact winter

Berry¹

2020

Acta Palaeobotanica

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In past investigations the pattern of differential survival of plants across the K/Pg boundary has been viewed as incompatible with severe asteroid impact winter scenarios (i.e., an impact winter lasting more than a few months), particularly the enigmatic survival of coryphoid palms and Pandanus (screw pine). Stateof- the-art climate models based on soot, sulfate and nano-sized dust aerosols predict a global impact winter that drastically reduced precipitation and resulted in a transient period of total darkness and permafrost conditions. This suggests that the plants most likely to have been affected by the global mass-extinction event were tropical phanerophytes that produce recalcitrant seeds, which by definition are desiccation-intolerant, survive less than a year, and cannot survive freezing. However, this hypothesis has never been tested. In this study I sampled over 100 plant species from the global fossil record that have a high probability of having produced either recalcitrant seeds/disseminules (n1 = 58) or orthodox seeds (n2 = 59), based on their phylogenetic relationships with extant taxa that either are monomorphic for these traits or specifically exhibit a genetic marker for abscisic acid inhibition associated with seed dormancy and recalcitrance. A one-tailed z-test for the difference between two proportions revealed that plant taxa with a high probability of having produced recalcitrant seeds had significantly lower survivorship than plant taxa with a high probability of having produced orthodox seeds (p < 0.0001). Based on these data, it can be concluded that plants which formed a frost-tolerant seed bank during the latest Maastrichtian were significantly more likely to survive the K/Pg impact winter than plants which did not (including palms). These data clearly indicate that the K/Pg impact winter probably lasted longer than a year and that it selected for seed-based traits that effectively sorted correlated functional traits of mature plants (i.e., leaf physiognomic features). This novel hypothesis stands as an alternative to J.A. Wolfe’s classic hypothesis that a mild K/Pg impact winter selected for fast-growing angiosperms with deciduous leaves and did not affect the plant communities of the Southern Hemisphere. Potential mechanisms for the rare survival of tropical, recalcitrant-seeded plants are discussed.

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No High Tibetan Plateau Until the Neogene

Cited by 2 publications

References 23 publications

Topographic Response of Hinterland Basins in Tibet to the India–Asia Convergence: 3D Thermo-Mechanical Modeling

Topographic Response of Hinterland Basins in Tibet to the India–Asia Convergence: 3D Thermo-Mechanical Modeling

Seed traits linked to differential survival of plants during the Cretaceous/Paleogene impact winter

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