Persistent effects of the Yellow River on the Chinese marginal seas began at least ~880 ka ago

Abstract

The Yellow River (or Huanghe and also known as China’s Sorrow in ancient times), with the highest sediment load in the world, provides a key link between continental erosion and sediment accumulation in the western Pacific Ocean. However, the exact age of its influence on the marginal sea is highly controversial and uncertain. Here we present high-resolution records of clay minerals and lanthanum to samarium (La/Sm) ratio spanning the past ~1 million years (Myr) from the Bohai and Yellow Seas, the potential sedimentary sinks of the Yellow River. Our results show a climate-driven provenance shift from small, proximal mountain rivers-dominance to the Yellow River-dominance at ~880 ka, a time period consistent with the Mid-Pleistocene orbital shift from 41-kyr to 100-kyr cyclicity. We compare the age of this provenance shift with the available age data for Yellow River headwater integration into the marginal seas and suggest that the persistent influence of the Yellow River on the Chinese marginal seas must have occurred at least ~880 ka ago. To our knowledge, this study provides the first offshore evidence on the drainage history of the Yellow River within an accurate chronology framework.

Using demographic model selection to untangle allopatric divergence and diversification mechanisms in the Rheum palmatum complex in the Eastern Asiatic Region

“…It is unlikely that river capture was the main driver for the divergence between the eastern and western lineages, although the models related to river capture had smaller Δ AIC values (e.g., model “no_mig,” Δ AIC = 40, see Table ). Previous studies have indicated that the time estimates of the drainage rearrangements of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River are controversial (they range from the Eocene to the late Pleistocene, see Xu, Kuntner, Liu, Chen, & Li, 2018; Yao et al., 2017, and references therein), and the younger estimate of 3.2 Ma falls within the confidence interval for the estimated divergence between the two lineages (2.38–3.40 Ma, Figure 4). However, if river capture had shaped population divergence and the genetic structure of this species complex, the genetic clusters would be expected to be separated by rivers (Wei, Meng, Bao, & Jiang, 2015; Zhang et al., 2011), which is not the case.…”

Formation of rivers and mountains drives diversification of primitively segmented spiders in continental East Asia

“…In particular, links between these geological events on the one hand, and the geographical distribution of organisms on the other, have aligned both geologists’ and biologists’ interests (Hou, Li, & Li, ; Zhao & Li, ; Zhao, Liu, Luo, & Ji, ). The development of the two largest river systems in continental East Asia, the Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers (Figure ), is believed to be closely associated with the topographic change following the collision of the Indian with the Eurasian plate, and its consequence, the TP uplifting (Yao et al., , ). The incision of the Three Gorges (Figure ) critically affected the evolution of the modern, eastwards flowing Yangtze River, which represents a geographical barrier (Zheng et al., ).…”

Satellite ASTER Mineral Mapping the Provenance of the Loess Used by the Ming to Build their Earthen Great Wall

“…Clay-size grains, which can travel distances of 1000s of kilometers by long-term wind suspension [8,47,89], are also readily transported by fluvial suspension. The Yellow River, which carries the largest volume of sediment of any river on the Earth [90], owes its distinctive beige-yellow color to a mixture of suspended clay minerals and iron oxides. Much of this suspended clay material is deposited into marine environments >1000 km to the east of the study area.…”

“…Much of this suspended clay material is deposited into marine environments >1000 km to the east of the study area. Drill cores sampled from the Bohai and Yellow Seas [90] show that the clay-size mineralogy comprises: illite (average:~60%), smectite (average:~15%), chlorite (average:~15%), and kaolinite (average:~10%). This dominance of illite in the clay fraction is mirrored in the Malan loess unit [8] found across the Ordos region (Figure 1a).…”