The provenance of Salawula Formation in East Kunlun and the tectonic thermal events of provenance: The evidence from U-Pb chronology of detrital zircons

Salawula Formation is the earliest marine deposit of East Kunlun in early Paleozoic.It's meaningful to reconstruct the tectonic evolution of east Kunlun in Early Paleozoic by studying Salawula Formation's formation time and its provenance.The authors obtained the youngest zircon age of 632±6 Ma by LA-ICP-MS U-Pb dating of the detrital zircons from Salawula Formation's clastic rocks and constrained its formation time.Moreover, there are three age ranges of ~650 Ma, ~800 Ma and ~980 Ma existent in the detrital zircons, and the authors infer that Baishahe Group, Xiaomiao Group, Wanbaogou Group and magmatic rocks formed during early Neoproterpzoic were Salawula Formation's provenance because of their similar zircon age distributions.Furthermore, the authors hold that the source areas experienced Early Paleoproterozoic, Late Paleoproterozoic, Late Mesoproterpzoic and Early Neoproterpzoic tectono-magmatic events according to the characteristics of their zircons' U-Pb age.