Collaborative Research: Late Cenozoic Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoenvironments of the Tibetan Plateau (China)

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This is a multidisciplinary, international collaborative project to study Cenozoic vertebrate fossils and paleoenvironments of the Tibetan Plateau. The uplift and growth of the Tibetan Plateau have been linked to regional and global climatic and environmental changes during the past 20 million years. Progressively cooler and drier conditions, possibly linked to the development of East Asian winter monsoon, seem to be a long-term trend and left deep marks on biological communities. Our preliminary explorations in Zanda, Kunlun Pass, and Qaidam basins in Tibet, funded by a prior NSF grant, have resulted in a tantalizing collection of fossil vertebrates including mammals, fishes, and turtles. Pliocene fishes from the Qaidam Basin are highly sensitive to the drying of Tibet and fossil mammals from the Zanda Basin suggest the origin of Ice Age megafauna elements from high plateau. Collectively these fossil assemblages hint at the emergence of an endemic fauna sometime in the late Miocene to Pliocene (12-2.6 million years ago). This new grant will allow us to greatly expand our research program that strives to gain a detailed understanding of zoogeographic barriers and environmental volatility resulting from the growth of the high plateau and how these profound changes have affected mammals in that region. An international team of paleontologists, structural and sedimentary geologists, stable isotope geochemists, and paleomagnetists, all experienced in fieldwork in Tibet, will attempt to achieve several objectives: (1) systematic collections of fossil mammals and fishes in these basins; (2) establishment of a regional chronologic framework based on the integration of biostratigraphy and magnetostratigraphy; (3) reconstruction of depositional environments and basin history and their relationships to the uplift of surrounding mountains and biologic events; (4) studies of the plateau drainage systems based on genealogical relationships of fossil fishes; (5) analyses of stable isotopes to explore changes in the diets of mammalian herbivores, plant communities, and regional climate and hydrological cycle; and (6) explorations of environmental implications related to the rising of the Tibet based on information of faunal successions, sedimentation, and stable isotopes. Results of our paleontological exploration are likely transformative because the poorly explored Tibetan Plateau yields unique fossils that are instructive about environmental changes and adaptations, zoogeographic barriers, and Ice Age megafauna origins. Fossil vertebrates fill a crucial missing piece of the puzzle in the current debate on past biological world and paleoenvironments in the region as the Plateau elevated to a critical height to form a formidable barrier for animal migration, to forge new drainage systems, and to fundamentally affect the climate of the northern hemisphere during the late Cenozoic. These new data are expected to afford testing of several hypotheses regarding systematic relationships of several unique mammals restricted to the plateau, timing and rate of growth of the plateau, environmental implications of the tectonic upheaval, and biogeographic consequences for mammals, fish and plants