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      Quantifying Crustal Thickness in Continental Collisional Belts: Global Perspective and a Geologic Application

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          Abstract

          We present compiled geochemical data of young (mostly Pliocene-present) intermediate magmatic rocks from continental collisional belts and correlations between their whole-rock Sr/Y and La/Yb ratios and modern crustal thickness. These correlations, which are similar to those obtained from subduction-related magmatic arcs, confirm that geochemistry can be used to track changes of crustal thickness changes in ancient collisional belts. Using these results, we investigate temporal variations of crustal thickness in the Qinling Orogenic Belt in mainland China. Our results suggest that crustal thickness remained constant in the North Qinling Belt (~45–55 km) during the Triassic to Jurassic but fluctuates in the South Qinling Belt, corresponding to independently determined tectonic changes. In the South Qinling Belt, crustal thickening began at ~240 Ma and culminated with 60–70-km-thick crust at ~215 Ma. Then crustal thickness decreased to ~45 km at ~200 Ma and remained the same to the present. We propose that coupled use of Sr/Y and La/Yb is a feasible method for reconstructing crustal thickness through time in continental collisional belts. The combination of the empirical relationship in this study with that from subduction-related arcs can provide the crustal thickness evolution of an orogen from oceanic subduction to continental collision.

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          Crustal contributions to arc magmatism in the Andes of Central Chile

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            The Genesis of Intermediate and Silicic Magmas in Deep Crustal Hot Zones

            C. Annen (2005)
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              Constant elevation of southern Tibet over the past 15 million years.

              The uplift of the Tibetan plateau, an area that is 2,000 km wide, to an altitude of about 5,000 m has been shown to modify global climate and to influence monsoon intensity. Mechanical and thermal models for homogeneous thickening of the lithosphere make specific predictions about uplift rates of the Tibetan plateau, but the precise history of the uplift of the plateau has yet to be confirmed by observations. Here we present well-preserved fossil leaf assemblages from the Namling basin, southern Tibet, dated to approximately 15 Myr ago, which allow us to reconstruct the temperatures within the basin at that time. Using a numerical general circulation model to estimate moist static energy at the location of the fossil leaves, we reconstruct the elevation of the Namling basin 15 Myr ago to be 4,689 +/- 895 m or 4,638 +/- 847 m, depending on the reference data used. This is comparable to the present-day altitude of 4,600 m. We conclude that the elevation of the southern Tibetan plateau probably has remained unchanged for the past 15 Myr.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                hufangyang@pku.edu.cn
                Journal
                Sci Rep
                Sci Rep
                Scientific Reports
                Nature Publishing Group UK (London )
                2045-2322
                1 August 2017
                1 August 2017
                2017
                : 7
                : 7058
                Affiliations
                [1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2256 9319, GRID grid.11135.37, Key Laboratory of Orogenic Belts and Crustal Evolution, Ministry of Education, , Peking University, ; Beijing, 100871 P.R. China
                [2 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2168 186X, GRID grid.134563.6, Department of Geosciences, , University of Arizona, 1040 E. 4th Street, ; Tucson, Arizona 85721 USA
                [3 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2322 497X, GRID grid.5100.4, Faculty of Geology and Geophysics, , University of Bucharest, ; 010041 Bucharest, Romania
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5322-0782
                Article
                7849
                10.1038/s41598-017-07849-7
                5539297
                28765580
                14011758-f1d2-4bae-9860-796cbf46df63
                © The Author(s) 2017

                Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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                : 22 May 2017
                : 30 June 2017
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