The uplifting process of the Bogda Mountain during the Cenozoic and its tectonic implication

The Tianshan Mountains have undergone its initial orogeny, extension adjusting and re-orogeny since the Late Paleozoic. The re-orogeny and uplifting process of the orogeny in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic are two of most important events in the geological evolution of Euro-Asian continent, which resulted in the formation of the present range-and-basin pattern in topography of the Tianshan Mountains and its adjacent areas. Thermochronology results by the method of fission-track dating of apatite suggest three obvious uplifting stages of the Bogad Mountain Chain re-orogeny during the Cenozoic, i.e. 5.6–19 Ma, 20–30 Ma, and 42–47 Ma. The strongest uplifting stage of the mountain is the second one at 20–30 Ma, when the mountain uplifted as a whole, and the beginning of re-orogeny was no less than 65 Ma. Furthermore, our studies also show that the uplifting types of the mountain are variable in the different time periods, including uplifting of mountain as a whole and differential uplifting. The apparently diversified uplifting processes of the mountain chain are characterized by the migration (or transformation) of the uplifting direction of the mountain from west to east and from north to south, and the main process of mountain extending is from north to south.