The present-day Yangtze River was established in the late Miocene: Evidence from detrital zircon ages

Fu, Xiaowei; Zhu, Weilin; Geng, Jianhua; Yang, Shouye; Zhong, Kai; Huang, Xueyong; Zhang, Luyao; Xu, Xing

doi:10.1016/j.jseaes.2020.104600

Cited by 21 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…Previous studies have reported a great number of detrital zircon data from the ECSB (Fu et al, 2021) and shown a complex age spectra in the middle Eocene and nearly single peak of the late Mesozoic age in the Paleocene, however, the absent of sample form the early Eocene sediments make the uncertainty of when the complex age spectra firstly appeared. To determine the first appearance of the provenance changes, we selected three sample from Well W1, J1 and L1, respectively (Fig.…”

Section: Samples and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have suggested that geographically adjacent neighbours of ECSB, including the North China Block, Yangtze Block, Cathaysia Block, Korean Peninsula and Okinawa Trough located SW of Japan, could be potential source regions for the sediments deposited in these basins (Deng et al, 2017;Fu et al, 2021) (Fig. 1).…”

Section: Defining Potential Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One view thinks that main source areas located in the adjacent uplifts such as Hupijiao Uplift and Haijiao Uplift (Zhang et al, 2018). While, increasing evidence manifested that distant inland of Yangtze Block and North China Block were the main source areas (Fu et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2018). Some studies proposed that this provenance transition from adjacent uplifts to far inland occurred in the Oligocene sediments in the ECSB and was related to the reorganization of the present-day Yangtze River Zhang et al, 2021a).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Some studies proposed that this provenance transition from adjacent uplifts to far inland occurred in the Oligocene sediments in the ECSB and was related to the reorganization of the present-day Yangtze River Zhang et al, 2021a). But much larger number of samples that covering most of the Cenozoic sediments manifested that this transition can be traced at least in the middle Eocene (Fu et al, 2021) which time the Yangtze River cannot be established (Zhang et al, 2021b;Zheng et al, 2013;Zheng, 2015). In this context, this large river should not be the Yangtze River.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Still, how this large river system initially formed is also poorly known. Although the North China Block and Korea Peninsular were proposed as the main source regions (Fu et al, 2021;Kwon and Boggs, 2002), but the details that how the detritus was delivered through rift basins to the southern ECSB over one thousand kilometre are far from known. Furthermore, the effects of the evolving rift basins were largely ignored in the previous studies (Fu et al, 2021;Wang et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2021a), even these basins were widely distributed in the potential catchment of this river and have different evolutionary histories (Ren et al, 2002;Xu et al, 2021) that might facilitate or impede the forming of a large river system.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Initiation of a “Lost” Large River on the East Asia Margin in the Middle Eocene

Fu¹,

Rong²,

Zhu³

et al. 2022

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The forming of large rivers are the integral consequences of the deep earth process and the surface. In contrast to the hot topics for rivers related to orogenic domains, rift-related large rivers are largely ignored especially in deep time studies. The Cenozoic East Asia margin provides very good opportunity to observe this kind of rivers. It has been believed that basin-and-swell physiography dominated the East Asia margin and impeded the forming of large rives in the early Cenozoic. In this paper, we combined provenance analysis of East China Sea Basin, where is a crucial place to trace the river evolution in East Asia margin, and regional geologic constraints to reveal drainage reorganizations. Detrital zircon U-Pb ages from the Early Eocene sediments of the East China Sea Basin are firstly reported. Our results together with literature data demonstrate that regional provenance changes occurred at the middle Eocene from one singe age peak at ~110 Ma of proximal sources to multiple age spectrum derived from far inland. Source to sink analysis indicated that the North China Block and Korea Peninsular provided the most detritus. Sedimentation and tectonic features of rift basins in the potential source areas indicated that rivers flowed into Bohai Basin and Jianghan Basin cannot provide terrigenous clasts for the lower reaches in the Eocene. Contrastingly, the dominantly fluvial sediments across the Subei-South Yellow Sea Basin suggested external river system and a bypassing region since the middle Eocene, coinciding with provenance change in ECSB. All these demonstrated that a large river (East Asia River) established in east Asia margin in the middle Eocene and flowed southwestward approximately 1500km to the sea in southern ECSB. This river might last to the middle Miocene. The deep earth processes driven by Izanagi-Pacific ridge subduction resulted in the overfilled stage of Subei-South Yellow Sea Basin and the post-rift subsidence in west depression of ECSB, and thus facilitated the initiation of the EAR. Our finding shed new light on the evolving landscape in East Asia and showed how subduction of deep earth process controlled the initiation of rift-related large rivers.

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Section: Samples and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Defining Potential Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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