Evidence for the Late Pliocene Aridification in the Eastern Tarim Basin,Northwest China

INTRODUCTION The vast arid regions in mid-latitude Asia(MLA)are among the most prominent landscapes on Earth’s surface and have been thought to provide a key source of global atmospheric dust(Hovan et al.,1989).Over the past decades,research on aridification of MLA have made tremendous progress and pointed large-scale aridity has prevailed in this region since the Late Pliocene despite long-term stepwise drying(Fang et al.,2020;Liu et al.,2014).However,direct sedimentary records for the late Pliocene aridification is still lack,hindering our understanding of regional comparison and the behind drive mechanism.The Tarim Basin in northwest China is one of the driest and largest inland basins and is considered as an ideal candidate for aridity records of MLA(Sun et al.,2013).Although considerable studies of environmental variations have been conducted(Liu et al.,2020;Zheng et al.,2015),a comprehensive picture of climatic change of the basin during the Late Pliocene is still unavailable,due to fragmentary sedimentary records,especially in the eastern Tarim Basin.In this contribution,we report the Late Pliocene lacustrine sediments found in Lop Nur of the east of Tarim Basin.The occurrence of abundant magnesite,their related crystal morphology and C-O isotopic signature suggested a typical brackish or even saline lake environment and arid climatic condition in eastern Tarim Basin during this interval.