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High-elevation Tibetan Plateau before India–Eurasia collision recorded by triple oxygen isotopes

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Abstract

The timing and magnitude of the early Cenozoic surface uplift of the Tibetan Plateau is controversial due to a scarcity of unaltered terrestrial sediments required for palaeoaltimetry techniques. Such information is critical, however, for constraining the geodynamic and palaeoclimatic evolution of the Indian and Eurasian continents and for interpreting global climate, biodiversity and biogeochemical cycles since the Cenozoic. We find that substantial uplift occurred by 63 to 61 million years ago, before the collision of the Indian and Eurasian continental plates, based on comparison of triple oxygen isotopes of modern meteoric waters with epithermal Ag–Pb–Zn deposit quartz veins from the Palaeocene Gangdese Arc in southern Lhasa. Low δ18O and δ17O quartz values are consistent with precipitation from meteoric waters influenced by a large degree of topographic rainout. We show that by 63 to 61 Ma, the Gangdese Arc reached an elevation of ~3.5 km, suggesting that the Gangdese Arc achieved >60% of its current elevation before continent–continent collision. This uplift was probably caused by crustal shortening in response to low-angle subduction of Neo-Tethyan oceanic lithosphere. This early high palaeoelevation estimate for the Himalaya–Tibetan system challenges previous assumptions that southern Tibet uplift required continent–continent collision to achieve substantial topography.

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Fig. 1: Topographic map of the southern Tibetan Plateau showing geological units and sample locations.
Fig. 2: Triple oxygen isotope measurements and palaeoelevation calculations.
Fig. 3: Surface uplift history of southern Tibet.

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Data availability

All new data collected as part of this study are reported in Extended Data Tables 1 and 2 and Supplementary Information and are available on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7948625.

Code availability

Code reproducing the regressions and calculations carried out in this work is available on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7948625.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 41888101, 41790450, 41872105, 42222207) grants to C.W., H.C., J.D. and Y.G., Heising Simons grant to C.P.C. and the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (2019QZKK0204) grant to J.D. and C.W. D.E.I. was supported by the UC Berkley Miller Institute for Basic Research and UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowships, and K.M. was supported by the Feodor-Lynen-Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. We thank P. Blisniuk and M. K. Lloyd for help with the silicate triple oxygen isotope measurements at the Stanford University Stable Isotope Biogeochemistry Laboratory and T. Kukla for detailed discussions on palaeoelevation reconstructions and relevant modern datasets.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Daniel E. Ibarra, **gen Dai, Yuan Gao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Daniel E. Ibarra

  2. Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Daniel E. Ibarra

  3. School of Earth Sciences and Resources, China University of Geosciences (Bei**g), Bei**g, China

    **gen Dai, Yuan Gao, Jiquan Chen, Xu Han, Dicheng Zhu, Yalin Li & Chengshan Wang

  4. State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences (Bei**g), Bei**g, China

    Yuan Gao & Chengshan Wang

  5. College of Earth Science, Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, China

    **nghai Lang

  6. Institute of Global Environmental Change, **’an Jiaotong University, **’an, China

    Pengzhen Duan, Lijuan Sha & Hai Cheng

  7. College of Earth Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao, China

    Zongjun Gao & Hui Tong

  8. Department of Geological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Katharina Methner & C. Page Chamberlain

  9. Institute of Mineral Resources, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Bei**g, China

    Juxing Tang

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  1. Daniel E. Ibarra
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Contributions

D.E.I., J.D., Y.G., C.P.C. and C.W. conceived the project and wrote the manuscript. Y.G. and J.D. coordinated sample collection, with X.L., J.C. and J.T. curating the rock samples and Z.G. and H.T. collecting the water samples. D.E.I., C.P.C. and K.M. performed the silicate triple oxygen isotope analyses at Stanford University. P.D. and L.S. performed the water triple oxygen isotope analyses with oversight from H.C. D.E.I., J.D., Y.G. and X.H. made the figures. D.Z. and Y.L. participated in discussion of data interpretation. All authors provided input on the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chengshan Wang.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Miquela Ingalls, Guillaume Dupont-Nivet and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Rebecca Neely and James Super, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Topographic map of the Tibetan Plateau showing quantitative paleoaltimetry studies and their major conclusions.

These results indicate that the Eocene high elevation of the proto-Tibetan Plateau covers most of the Lhasa and Qiangtang terranes, except for the central Tibetan valley where was lowland; while the Himalyas was also lowland during the Eocene. Abbreviations: YZSZ, Yarlung Zangbo Suture zone; BNSZ, Banggong Nujiang Suture zone; JSSZ, **shajiang Suture zone; AKSZ, Ayimaqin Kunlun Suture zone. References are listed in the Supplementary Information Table S2.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Time-paleoaltitude plots from palaeoaltimetry results.

a, The Gangdese Arc. b, The northern Lhasa and the BNSZ. c, The YZSZ and Himalayas. In plot a, dark blue and purple curves are extracted from b and c, respectively. Data points are presented as mean values for mean palaeoelevation ± 1σ, along with the mean age and its total range.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Stable isotopes of Tibetan water samples present in this study.

a. Meteoric water relationships showing the Tibetan meteoric water line (MWL, dashed blue line) for δ18O versus δD values relative to the global meteoric water line (GMWL, black line), δ18O versus d-excess values, and the triple oxygen Tibetan MWL (dashed blue line) compared to the GMWL (black line) in δ′18O versus δ′17O space. The GMWL is from Aron et al.27 and is indistinguishable from the Tibetan MWL, though in δ18O versus Δ′17O space the differences in slope and intercept are noticeable (see Extended Data Fig. 6). Horizontal lines in the second panel is for an intercept of 10 for the GMWL. b. δ18O values versus elevation, latitude, and longitude. Note that the data in the first panel is equivalent to Fig. 2b but including all precipitation as well as stream, river and snowpack data. c. Δ′17O values versus elevation, latitude and longitude. On all panels data from Kukla et al.50 are the small circles, and data from this study and Tian et al.25,70 are the large blue diamonds.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Microscopic characteristics of the rhyolite porphyry and crystal tuff from the Sinongduo epithermal Ag-Pb-Zn deposit.

a,d,e, Rhyolite porphyry. b,c,f, Crystal tuff. Q, quartz; Q vein, quartz vein; Py, pyrite; Chal, chalcedony; Chal vein, chalcedony vein; Ser, sericite; Pl, plagioclase.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Sensitivity of results to the choice of formation temperature and Inclusion of additional quartz measurements.

a. Sensitivity of results to choice of formation temperature using the 210 °C fluid inclusion formation temperature rather than the paired galena-sphalerite sulphur isotope temperature (240 °C, Fig. 2a) (both datasets from Li et al.31). b. Inclusion of additional quartz measurements (Extended Data Table 2) from nearby localities in regression (green circles) using the sulphur isotope formation temperature (240 °C) as in Fig. 2a. Data points are presented as mean values ± 1SE of individual measurements. Dashed line with confidence intervals (1σ, gray shading) is the error-weighted York regression.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Sensitivity of results to the choice of triple oxygen meteoric water line.

a. Global meteoric water line from Aron et al.27: δ′17 O = 0.5268 × δ′18 O + 0.015, which is nearly identical to that of Sharp et al.59. b. The original global meteoric water line from Luz and Barkan28. For both plots we assume the a formation temperature of 240 °C, as in Fig. 2a, and the results are indistinguishable from the main text results. Data points are presented as mean values ± 1SE of individual measurements. Dashed line with confidence intervals (1σ, gray shading) is the error-weighted York regression.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Sensivity of meteoric water oxygen isotopic composition to formation temperature across a wide temperature range and the assumed rainfall δ18O value at sea level.

a. Sensivity of meteoric water oxygen isotopic composition to formation temperature across a wide temperature range (125–450 °C). The mean and standard deviation (black line and grey bar) of the two quatz formation temperature datasets from Li et al.31 are shown across the top. Dashed line show the York regression confidence interval’s intercept with the Tibet meteoric water line derived from this work (Fig. 2a). The blue triangle represent our best estimate palaeo-meteoric δ18O value using the galena-sphalerite sulphur isotope temperature (240 °C). b. Sensivitiy of meteoric water oxygen isotopic composition to the assumed rainfall δ18O value at sea level. The mean and errors (black line and grey bar) of rainfall δ18O values used by Ding et al.8 (also used in this study), Ingalls et al.9, and Rowley and Currie7 are shown above, with an alternative higher estimate from Hren et al.26 based on modern data.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Sensitivity of our calculations to the choice of slope and intercept of the Paleocene MWL for Tibet.

a. Contours of the oxygen isotopic composition of the calculated palaeo-meteoric water assuming 240 °C formation temperature (as in Fig. 2a) for plausible range in MWL slopes (λ) and intercepts (γ). The modern MWL slope and intercept estimates from previous work (global and regional) mentioned in the text are shown by grey points (BL10: Luz and Barkan28; PJ19: Passey and Ji30; A20: Aron et al.27). The error bars on the mean values for the Tibet MWL are 1σ as reported in the text (and shown in Extended Data Fig. 1a) and propagated in our calculations. The light blue symbols are the seasonal and annual slope and intercepts from the Tian et al.25,70 dataset from Lhasa and Nyingchi. With seasonal slopes derived for a more extensive region by Tian et al.25 (Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; see their Table 3) shown across the top of the plot. b. Same as panel a but for the mean palaeoelevation estimate using the model of Rowley and Garzione22 as in Fig. 2b. The purple zone illustrates the postive relationship between the seasonal slopes and intercepts derived in this study and the global meteoric water lines reported by previous work24,25,27. Confidence shading is 1σ in both panels.

Extended Data Table 1 Triple Oxygen isotope measurements of river water and snowmelt water from the Tibetan plateau. All samples reported on the VSMOW2-SLAP2 scale
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Extended Data Table 2 Triple oxygen isotope measurements of quartz and whole rock samples from the Sinonguo epithermal deposit (BZK samples) and associated deposits (T, WZK and BQZK samples)
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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 and Texts 1–3.

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Ibarra, D.E., Dai, J., Gao, Y. et al. High-elevation Tibetan Plateau before India–Eurasia collision recorded by triple oxygen isotopes. Nat. Geosci. 16, 810–815 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01243-x

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