Pliocene fluviolacustrine deposits within the Yushe Basin of Shanxi Province are extremely well developed, and contain abundant paleobotanical remains. Representative taxa from the early to middle Pliocene include: Magnolia, Liquidambar, Platycarya, Tsuga, and others, indicating a northern subtropical dense forest for the landscape of the Yushe basin during that period. There was, however, a tr...

As extreme surface processes, long-term river damming and outburst events can impact sediment supply transportation in valleys therefore significantly change the landscape. Lacustrine sediments were identified wide Xigaze Valley, middle reaches of Yarlung Tsangpo River Tibet, an area which has been considered to have a paleodammed lake. However, evolutionary process mechanisms associated with t...

Analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) is a versatile and powerful method for the quantitative analysis of macromolecules in solution. AUC has broad applications for the study of biomacromolecules in a wide range of solvents and over a wide range of solute concentrations. Three optical systems are available for the analytical ultracentrifuge (absorbance, interference, and fluorescence) that permi...

Northern South America experienced significant changes in drainage patterns during the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean. Disappearance of a mega-wetland in the western Amazonian basins was followed by the formation of the eastward-draining Amazon River, which has been attributed to Andean uplift1–5. However, South America’s westward motion over cold, dense subducted slabs implies that region...

Single grain zircon U-Pb geochronology has demonstrated great potentials in extracting tectonic and atmospheric circulation signal carried by aeolian, fluvial, and fluviolacustrine sediments. A routine in this sort of studies is analyzing 100-150 grains and then compares zircon U-Pb age spectra between the measured sample and the potential sources. Here we compared the zircon U-Pb age results o...

Recent mineralogical studies suggest past aqueous activities in the 150-km-wide Robert Sharp impact crater, western neighbor of Gale crater on Mars. Despite their similarities, and craters display very different morphologies. Using high-resolution orbital images, we made morphological stratigraphical analyses, as well age determinations showing that has experienced a complex geological history....