Apatite fission track thermochronology in the Kuluketage and Aksu areas, NW China: Implication for tectonic evolution of the northern Tarim

•Thermochronological study in northern Tarim reveals multi-stage cooling events.•The first episode of cooling event occurred during the Mid-Permian to Triassic.•First event may be triggered by final amalgamation of Central Asian Orogenic Belt.•Cenozoic reheating and recooling likely occurred due to north-propagating stress.•As a rigid block, northern Tarim has not been affected much by Cenozoic activity.

Tarim Precambrian bedrocks are well exposed in the Kuluketage and Aksu areas, where twenty four samples were taken to reveal the denudation history of the northern Tarim Craton. Apatite fission track dating and thermal history modeling suggest that the northern Tarim experienced multi-stage cooling events which were assumed to be associated with the distant effects of the Cimmerian orogeny and India-Eurasia collision in the past. But the first episode of exhumation in the northern Tarim, occurring in the mid-Permian to Triassic, is here suggested to be induced by docking of the Tarim Craton and final amalgamation of the Central Asian Orogenic Belt. The cooling event at ca. 170 Ma may be triggered by the Qiangtang-Eurasia collision. Widespread Cretaceous exhumation could be linked with docking of the Lhasa terrane in the late Jurassic. Cenozoic reheating and recooling likely occurred because of the north-propagating stress, however, this has not affected the northern Tarim much because the Tarim is characterized by rigid block-like motion.

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