Pliocene uplift of the Northern Tibetan Plateau

Neogene redbeds passing upward into upward-coarsening conglomerate and debris-flow deposits at the foot of the Kunlun Mountains record the change in paleoslope related to uplift of the surface of the northern Tibetan Plateau. Detailed magnetostratigraphy of a 4.5 km section near Yecheng in the western Kunlun Mountains shows that the change from deposition on distal alluvial plains to proximal alluvial fans occurred during the Gilbert reversed chron (4.5-3.5 Ma). The change in depositional facies was accompanied by an increase in sedimentation rate from an average ~0.15 mm/yr between the earliest Oligocene and the earliest Pliocene to 1.4 mm/yr in the Gauss normal chron (3.6-2.6 Ma). We interpret the change in depositional facies and increase in sedimentation rate as indicating that the main uplift of the northwestern Tibetan Plateau began ca. 4.5 Ma.