中国北方晚新生代红粘土研究的进展与问题

Advanced in Research of the Late Cenozoic Red Clay in North China

中国北方地区晚第三纪以来沉积了一套以富含”三趾马”哺乳动物群为特征的红粘土,近年来倍受关注而逐渐成为我国北方晚新生代沉积环境演化研究的热点。红粘土的研究从早期的简单地层划分对比发展到目前运用多种手段、从多个角度进行综合研究,并与青藏高原隆升乃至全球环境事件联系起来,把中国北方风尘沉积开始的时间一再提前。但是,在研究过程中,对红粘土的成因、晚第三纪风尘沉积与青藏高原隆升的关系、代用指标的适用性等诸多问题还存有很多分岐,详细深入的系统研究还有待进一步开展。笔者简要回顾了红粘土的研究历史,主要对近十几年来红粘土研究所取得的成果和研究中存在的一些问题进行讨论。

A set of red clay which was characterized by teeming with Hipparion fossils has deposited in north China since the late Tertiary. It has already become the focus attaching much importance to the research on the sedimentary environment evolution of the late Cenozoic in northern China. The method of studying the red clay has developed from the simple strata dividing and comparing means in earlier time to the synthetical research with multi-approaches and from multi-viewpoints at present. These researches have been connected with the uplifting of the Tibet Plateau and even the global environmental events. Thus, the time of the eolian deposits in north China has been advanced constantly. But, there are still a great deal of divergences on the origin of the red clay, on the relation between late Tertiary eolian deposits and the lifting of the Tibet Plateau, and on the suitability of the indices, etc. So, detailed and systematical researches remain to be seen in the future. This article briefly introduced the history of the red clay research and mainly reviewed the red clay study achievements over the past ten years, and also discussed some problems in the red clay study. We expect this article will benefit to the research of the red clay in the future.