The Taklimakan Desert is located in the foreland basin of the Tibetan Plateau. We report here the results of stratigraphic investigations of a 1626-meter-thick sequence with interbedded wind-blown silt from the southern marginal Taklimakan Desert. Because the studied section is located downwind of the desert, the eolian silt accumulation is closely linked to desert formation. Our new evidence i...

The Chazy, Black River and Trenton Groups are a well studied sequence of fossiliferous limestones, dolostones and sandstones in the Champlain Valley of New York, Vermont and southern Quebec. These rocks record shallow water cyclic sedimentation in the foreland basin of Laurentia prior to and during the initial stages of the Taconic Orogeny. This field trip reviews the stratigraphy of these unit...

We present the results of forward modelling of the Northern Alpine German-Austrian Molasse Basin, which forms part of the Northern Alpine Foreland Basin (NAFB) extending from Lake Geneva in the west to Lower Austria in the east. The observed deflection of the European plate under the NAFB has been modelled along five profiles perpendicular to the basin axis. Models treating the deflection of th...

The late Middle Jurassic–early Eocene (;120 m.y.) sediment-accumulation history of the Cordilleran foreland basin in northern Utah exhibits a sigmoidal pattern on a rate vs. time plot, with moderate rates of accumulation during late Middle Jurassic, very low net rates during Late Jurassic–earliest Cretaceous, increasingly rapid rates during Earlymiddle Cretaceous, and low rates during Late Cret...

Based mainly on field geological observation and geochronologic data, six tectonic units have been recognized in western Inner Mongolia (China), including, from south to north: North China Craton (NCC), Southern Orogenic Belt (SOB), Hunshandake Block (HB), Northern Orogenic Belt (NOB), South Mongolia microcontinent (SMM), and Southern margin of Ergun Block (SME), suggesting that the tectonic fr...

The integration of sedimentological and structural data in the western end of the Ripoll syncline allows a clearer understanding of the palaeogeography of the area between the oblique termination of the Pedraforca thrust sheet and the frontal Vallfogona thrust during middle Eocene times. In this region, a 2.5-km thick clastic succession corresponding to the Bellmunt and Milany sequences infille...

Single detrital monazite grains from the Dharamsala and Lower Siwalik Formations (early to mid-Miocene continental foreland basin sediments in NW India) have been dated by two techniques; isotope dilution thermal ionization multicollector mass spectrometry (ID-TIMS) and laser ablation plasma ionization multicollector mass spectrometry (LA-PIMMS). The results give U–Th–Pb isotopic ages of c. 400...

The northwestwards-directed Eocene propagation of the Western Alpine orogen is linked with (1) compressional structures in the basement and the Mesozoic sedimentary cover of the European foreland, well preserved in the External Zone (or Dauphiné Zone) of the Western Alps, and (2) tectono-sedimentary features associated with the displacement of the early Tertiary foreland basin. Three major shor...

The highest elevation of the Tibetan Plateau, lying 5,700 m above sea level, occurs within the part of the Lhasa block immediately north of the India-Tibet suture zone (Yarlung Zangbo suture zone, YZSZ), being 700 m higher than the maximum elevation of more northern parts of the plateau. Various mechanisms have been proposed to explain this differentially higher topography and the rock uplift t...

The aim of this work is to propose a first-order estimate of the crustal and lithospheric mantle geometry of the Arabia–Eurasia collision zone and to separate the measured Bouguer anomaly into its regional and local components. The crustal and lithospheric mantle structure is calculated from the geoid height and elevation data combined with thermal analysis. Our results show that Moho depth var...