Constraining the age of Liuqu Conglomerate, southern Tibet: Implications for evolution of the India-Asia collision zone

Abstract

Controversy over the depositional age and provenance of the Liuqu Conglomerate along the major structural Indus-Yarlung suture zone in South Tibet clouds our understanding of the process of the India/Asia collision. Here, we report low-temperature thermochronometric data (apatite fission track, apatite and zircon (U-Th)/He for the Liuqu Conglomerate in the Xigaze area). Our new data constrain its depositional age to latest Oligocene-Early Miocene time, indicating that rather than having formed immediately following Paleogene India-Asia collision or collision between India and an intra-oceanic arc as previously proposed, the Conglomerate was probably deposited in an intermontane basin, at a s..