Search

The Xiaoxia anticline is a basement-cored fold in the northeastern Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. It formed during the Middle–Late Cenozoic in a NNE-orientation oblique to prevailing WNW-striking thrusts in the surrounding region. The fold lies within the fault-bounded Xining Basin, which has behaved as a clockwise rotating and internally deforming block during the mid–late Tertiary. Proterozoic crystalline basement rocks and Jurassic–Cretaceous–Cenozoic terrestrial sediments exposed within the fold record three separate oblique-slip deformation events as determined by cross-cutting generations of faults and folds. The modern Xiaoxia anticline developed by: (1) outward-directed thrusting on the two fold limbs and, (2) oblique-slip thrusting on closely spaced minor NNE-striking faults that caused distributed uplift and passive shear folding of the sedimentary cover within the fold core. Tilted and thrusted river terraces on the flanks of the Xiaoxia anticline dated by optically stimulated luminescence and electron spin resonance indicate that folding has continued into the Late Quaternary (post-45.5 ± 5.5 ka) and therefore may still be active today. The development of the Xiaoxia anticline appears to be best explained in the context of the kinematic evolution of the Xining Basin's bounding strike-slip faults. Formation of the Xiaoxia anticline demonstrates that partitioned transpression in an evolving transpressional setting can invert intra-montane basins and produce basement-cored folds, thereby contributing to regional plateau uplift.

This book will disappoint most geologists and is not to be recommended. The authors are geomorphologists who believe that the importance of geomorphology in understanding mountain building has been under-appreciated by the geological community. This may be true, but this book will not help their cause. The stated theme of the book is the narrow assertion that all mountain ranges form by vertical uplift of plateaus followed by erosion with or without gravity sliding. This book is basically anti-plate tectonics and, instead of enlightening the reader, we are treated to one-sided views, unsupported assertions, obsolete information and generally sloppy scholarship. The book is uncomfortably organized between chapters covering mountains on four of seven major continents and topical subjects such as mountains with gravity structures and mountains on passive margins. The overall writing is not concise, nor well organized, and there is widespread redundancy of the authors’ opinions. The figures are generally very poor. Many are obsolete cartoons such as a 1965 cross-section of the …