The area and elevation of the Tibetan Plateau over time has directly affected Asia’s topography, the characteristics of the Asian monsoon, and modified global climate, but in ways that are poorly understood. Charting the uplift history is crucial for understanding the mechanisms that link elevation and climate irrespective of time and place. While some palaeoelevation data are available for southern and central Tibet, clues to the uplift history of northern Tibet remain sparse and largely circumstantial.
Recently, Prof. Yu-Fei Wang’s research group at the State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, cooperating with scientists from Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the United Kingdom, Austria and India, reported a newly discovered early Miocene barberry (Berberis) leaf fossil from Wudaoliang in the Hoh-Xil Basin in northern Tibet, at a present altitude of 4611 ± 9 m, whereas its nearest living species (B. asiatica) is confined to altitudes of 914–2450 m. Considering the fossil and its nearest living species probably occupied a similar or identical environmental niche, the palaeoelevation of the fossil locality, corrected for Miocene global temperature difference, is estimated to have been between 1395 and 2931 m, which means the Northern Tibet has been uplifted ~2–3 km in the last 17 million years. This new findings contradict hypotheses that suggest northern Tibet had reached or exceeded its present elevation prior to the Miocene.
The research provides a case study to estimate the palaeoaltimetry of Northern Tibet during the early Miocene based on Biological evidence, and so provides a comparator for geophysical models and geochemical evidence, which will improve our understanding of the orogenesis of the whole Tibetan Plateau.
The reviewer from Scientific Reports commented: “The paper by Bin Sun (et al.) is an elegant contribution on past distribution of Berberis, and -more importantly- to the debate on the development of the Tibetan Plateau through time. ...There remains little doubt that the reported fossil leave belongs to Berberis, and that it was found well outside the altitudinal range known for B. asiatica, its nearest living relative. This finding enables the researchers to make important, credible new paleoelevation estimate for the northern Tibetan Plateau during the early Miocene. Following from this, the northern rim of the plateau was uplifted at a later time than anticipated in existing works.”
This work has been published in Scientific Reports (http://www.nature.com/articles/srep10379), PhD candidate Bin Sun is the first author of this papers.
The study is supported the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany and the State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The area and elevation of the Tibetan Plateau over time has directly affected Asia’s topography, the characteristics of the Asian monsoon, and modified global climate, but in ways that are poorly understood. Charting the uplift history is crucial for understanding the mechanisms that link elevation and climate irrespective of time and place. While some palaeoelevation data are available for southern and central Tibet, clues to the uplift history of northern Tibet remain sparse and largely circumstantial.
Recently, Prof. Yu-Fei Wang’s research group at the State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, cooperating with scientists from Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, the United Kingdom, Austria and India, reported a newly discovered early Miocene barberry (Berberis) leaf fossil from Wudaoliang in the Hoh-Xil Basin in northern Tibet, at a present altitude of 4611 ± 9 m, whereas its nearest living species (B. asiatica) is confined to altitudes of 914–2450 m. Considering the fossil and its nearest living species probably occupied a similar or identical environmental niche, the palaeoelevation of the fossil locality, corrected for Miocene global temperature difference, is estimated to have been between 1395 and 2931 m, which means the Northern Tibet has been uplifted ~2–3 km in the last 17 million years. This new findings contradict hypotheses that suggest northern Tibet had reached or exceeded its present elevation prior to the Miocene.
The research provides a case study to estimate the palaeoaltimetry of Northern Tibet during the early Miocene based on Biological evidence, and so provides a comparator for geophysical models and geochemical evidence, which will improve our understanding of the orogenesis of the whole Tibetan Plateau.
The reviewer from Scientific Reports commented: “The paper by Bin Sun (et al.) is an elegant contribution on past distribution of Berberis, and -more importantly- to the debate on the development of the Tibetan Plateau through time. ...There remains little doubt that the reported fossil leave belongs to Berberis, and that it was found well outside the altitudinal range known for B. asiatica, its nearest living relative. This finding enables the researchers to make important, credible new paleoelevation estimate for the northern Tibetan Plateau during the early Miocene. Following from this, the northern rim of the plateau was uplifted at a later time than anticipated in existing works.”
This work has been published in Scientific Reports (http://www.nature.com/articles/srep10379), PhD candidate Bin Sun is the first author of this papers.
The study is supported the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the State Key Laboratory of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, Institute of Botany and the State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences.