The early exhumation history of the Western Tianshan<scp>UHP</scp>metamorphic belt, China: New constraints from titanite U–Pb geochronology and thermobarometry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The Chinese Western Tianshan terrane is a well‐known ultrahigh‐pressure ( UHP ) metamorphic belt that mainly consists of subducted oceanic crustal materials. While two uplift stages have been recognized, the early exhumation history has not been fully constrained. We conducted U–Th–Pb and trace element microanalysis of titanite as well as zircon from UHP eclogites. Apart from several inclusions in garnet, three types of retrograde titanite have been identified based on their petrographic occurrences: (a) in matrix enclosing relict rutile; (b) as coarse‐grained coronas around garnet; and (c) in veins coexisting with epidote and/or apatite. The three types of titanite are homogeneous in chemical composition, low in Al, enriched in middle rare earth elements ( REE s), and depleted in light REE s and heavy REE s, suggesting their growth during retrograde decompression. Sensitive high‐resolution ion microprobe (SHRIMP) and LA ‐ ICP ‐ MS U–Pb dating of titanite from four samples, regardless of their textural occurrences, gave consistent ages of c . 306 Ma. Phase equilibria modelling and Zr‐in‐titanite thermometry indicate that titanite replaced rutile at ~14 kbar and ~570°C, following a nearly isothermal decompression from the UHP peak conditions of 30 kbar and 550–570°C. SHRIMP zircon U–Pb dating yields two age groups: c . 320 Ma and c . 305 Ma. The former is generally interpreted to be the age of UHP stage. The latter, overlapping the titanite ages, represents the timing of titanite growth during exhumation. Thus, we estimate that the near‐isothermal exhumation from the UHP peak conditions to the epidote–amphibolite facies retrogression (14 kbar) lasted c . 15 Ma, corresponding to an average exhumation rate of 3.4 ± 2.5 mm/yr (2 σ ). This exhumation rate lies within the range of oceanic LT ‐ HP belts in the absence of continental subduction, suggesting a similar slab exhumation mechanism that operates in the UHP regime. The consistent retrograde metamorphic ages recorded by titanite from different localities, and the general agreement among P–T paths in the adjacent area, suggest that the UHP unit of Western Tianshan metamorphic belt was likely exhumed as a coherent unit.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".