Late Pliocene onset of the Cona rift, eastern Himalaya, confirms eastward propagation of extension in Himalayan-Tibetan orogen

As the sole rift currently recognized in the eastern Himalaya, Cona rift plays a critical role to evaluate previously proposed numerous models interpreting the E-W extension in the Himalayan-Tibetan orogen, since its activation history provides an unique constraint to reveal the general spatiotemporal pattern across the entire Himalaya.

In this study, Bian et al. (2020) integrated results from multiple low-temperature thermochronological methods, such as biotite and K-feldspar 40Ar/39Ar, zircon and apatite (U-Th)/He, to provide a credible constraint for the complete activation history for the Cona rift.

This research revealed late Pliocene onset of the Cona rift, confirming the eastward propagation of E-W extension across the entire Himalaya, by excluding the alternative challenging possibility that claims a bidirectional younging tendency toward the central Himalaya. This research proposed that E-W extension was induced by eastward lithospheric flow driven by Indian slab dynamics and coupled asynchronous gravitational potential energy gradients.

Figure 1. Proposed geodynamic process dominating the E-W extension across the Himalayan-Tibet orogen.

This new study of Associate Prof. Junfeng Gong’s group has been published online by Earth and Planetary Science Letters (IF=4.637). The first author of this study is Shuang Bian, a Ph.D. student in Gong’s group. The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, National S&T Major Project, the China Geological Survey and the NSF Tectonics Program.

For details: Bian, S., Gong, J. *, Zuza, A.V., Yang, R., Tian, Y., Ji, J., Chen, H., Xu, Q., Chen, L., Lin, X., Cheng, X., Tu, J., Yu X., 2020. Late Pliocene onset of the Cona rift, eastern Himalaya, confirms eastward propagation of extension in Himalayan-Tibetan orogen. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 544: 116383.

Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X20303277