Late Carboniferous crustal uplift of the Tarim plate and its constraints on the evolution of the Early Permian Tarim Large Igneous Province

• Late Carboniferous erosion and Early Permian deposition indicates a crustal uplift event at ~ 300 Ma.
• This crustal uplift is short-term and dome-shaped with a height over 1 000 m.
• This uplift event was possibly caused by mantle plume.
• We support the view that mantle plume forced the Tarim LIP at ~ 290 Ma.

The Early Permian Tarim Large Igneous Province (LIP) in northwestern China has been related to a mantle plume, mostly constrained by petrology and geochemistry. However, the crustal uplift/erosion related to a mantle plume has rarely been addressed. In order to improve our understanding of crustal uplift/erosion we have studied the stratigraphy and sedimentology of eighty-five boreholes/outcrops and two seismic profiles. The results indicate a regional unconformity and onlap contact between the earliest Permian and Carboniferous strata, with denudation of Carboniferous and deposition of earliest Permian strata. The denudation of Carboniferous strata has been divided into three types of erosion: deep, partial and weak, with a deep erosion zone located in Northern Tarim region (east of Keping and west of Northern Tarim) which gradually weakens towards the south. Above the unconformity, the Early Permian pre-eruption deposit is thinnest (< 100 m) in Northern Tarim region, and thickens gradually to the south (> 300 m), which is consistent with the spatial distribution of Late Carboniferous erosion. This unconformity represents a spatial distribution of denudation forced by doming uplift/erosion at the end of the Carboniferous, with minimum estimation of its vertical and lateral extent of 887 m and ~ 300 km, respectively, which are comparable to those of other mantle-plume-generated LIPs. Both the Late Carboniferous erosion and Early Permian sedimentary records indicate a crustal uplift event at ~ 300 Ma. The uplift was short-term and approximately dome-shaped, occurring immediately before the Tarim LIP (~ 290 Ma). These results provide new stratigraphic and sedimentological constraints on the role of a mantle plume in the formation Early Permian Tarim LIP, from a crustal uplift perspective. The spatial distribution of denudation suggests that the regions of Northern Tarim, or further north, represent the centre of the potential plume head.