Late Miocene Uplift and Exhumation of the Lesser Himalaya Recorded by Clumped Isotope Compositions of Detrital Carbonate
Abstract
The Himalaya orogen evolved since the Eocene as the Tethyan‐, Greater‐, Lesser‐ and Sub‐Himalaya thrust sheets were uplifted and exhumed in sequence. Reconstructing the provenance of sediment in Himalayan River systems can inform on stages in the tectonic history of the orogen. Here, we analyze the oxygen, carbon and "clumped" isotope compositions of carbonate minerals from Himalayan bedrock, Ganga River sediments and Bengal Fan turbidite deposits. We demonstrate that river sediments consist of a mixture of Himalayan‐derived and authigenic calcite precipitated in the river system. The relative abundance and clumped isotope apparent temperatures of detrital calcite in turbidite deposits decreased between the Late Miocene and Pliocene, while chemical weathering intensity did not increase during this interval. Considered together, these results reflect the establishment of the Lesser Himalaya as an important carbonate sediment source for Himalayan rivers, driven by the uplift and exhumation of this thrust sheet.
Copyright and License
© 2024. The Author(s).
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Acknowledgement
We thank Nami Kitchen for assisting with lab procedures. This work has been supported by Israel Science Foundation Grant 1010/20 to U.R.
Funding
This work has been supported by Israel Science Foundation Grant 1010/20 to U.R.
Contributions
Conceptualization: U. Ryb, C. Ponton.
Formal analysis: U. Ryb, C. Ponton.
Funding acquisition: U. Ryb.
Investigation: U. Ryb, C. Ponton, C. France‐Lanord.
Methodology: J. M. Eiler.
Resources: C. France‐Lanord, K. Yoshida.
Writing – original draft: U. Ryb.
Writing – review & editing: C. Ponton, C. France‐Lanord, K. Yoshida, J. M. Eiler.
Data Availability
Data are provided with this paper. Matlab source-code and functions are available at Ryb (2024). Summary of mineral and isotope measurements on sediment samples is given in Table S1. Summary of XRF data from France-Lanord et al. (2016) used to calculate K/Si* values is given in Table S2. Figure S1 in Supporting Information S1 was generated using data from the following sources: Srivastava (2001), Sinha et al. (2006), A. Singh et al. (2016), Rahaman et al. (2011), and Gajurel et al. (2006).
Supplemental Material
Supporting information (PDF)
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Additional details
- Israel Science Foundation
- 1010/20
- Accepted
-
2024-10-06Accepted
- Available
-
2024-11-11Version of Record online
- Caltech groups
- Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
- Publication Status
- Published