LATE CENOZOIC RAPID UPLIFT OF THE TIBETAN PLATEAU AND FORMATION OF ASIAN MONSOON SYSTEM:EVIDENCE FROM PALEOMAGNETISM AND PALEOBIOLOGY OF RED BED-BOULDER CONGLOMERATE SEQUENCES ALONG THE NORTHERN TIBET PLATEAU

Timing of uplift of the Tibetan Plateau is a fundamental work to understand global climatic change and mountain\|building mechanism. Because most of the evidence comes from the Himalaya\|South Tibet, the northern margin of the Plateau may hold the key to unravel a whole view of the Plateau uplift history, in which basin sediments are the most important part because they have continuously recorded the history of pure surface uplift in related mountains. In the whole foredeep bordered by the North Marginal Thrust (Kunlun—Altun—Qilian—Longmen Trusts) along the northern and eastern Tibetan Plateau, thick Cenozoic stratigraphy is widely distributed and records the whole history of the Plateau uplift process. It can be lithologically divided in three large units from top to bottom: light colored sediments, boulder conglomerate and red bed. The red bed is mostly fine sediments of lacustrine and/or fluviolacustrine origins and the boulder conglomerate has been long thought as evidence of rapid uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. The light colored sediments are mostly eolian and/or fluviolacustrine deposits or desert\|gobi sediments. Thus, to date the boulder conglomerate holds the key to unravel the Plateau uplift. We chose the Linxia Basin in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau and Jiuquan Basin in the northern Qilian Mountains as two pilot controlling sites to reconstruct the history of uplift process of the Tibetan Plate au and its accompanied climatic change and to see if a coupling process would ex ist between the uplift of the Plateau and Asian monsoon system.