Cenozoic thermo-tectonic evolution of the northeastern Pamir revealed by zircon and apatite fission-track thermochronology

The northeastern Pamir is a key location to explore Asian intracontinental tectonic processes during the Cenozoic. New zircon fission-track (ZFT) data show a 20- to 50-km-wide region of partially reset ages on the northeastern margin of the Pamir salient, interpreted as an exhumed and tilted partial annealing zone (PAZ). Widespread ZFT age peaks at ~ 50 Ma within the ZFT PAZ likely date early motion of the Kashgar-Yecheng transfer system (KYTS), but suggest this fault system was narrower in the Early Cenozoic than it is today. Apatite fission-track (AFT) ages of ~ 10-6 Ma, combined with field observations across the KYTS, hint at an episode of strong thrusting-related exhumational cooling, which indicates that the modern fault system probably formed at this time. To the southwest of the KYTS, the combination of new fission-track and existing thermochronology data allows establishing temperature-time trajectories that present diachronous rapid cooling from ~ 450 to 120 °C in the Sares (> 13-10 Ma), Muztagata (~ 10-7 Ma) and Kongur Shan (~ 3-1 Ma) domes. Rapid cooling in the eastern Sares and southern Muztagata massifs is driven by doming, as supported by kinematic analyses of the Shen-ti fault. Successive rapid cooling of these massifs confirms eastward propagation of doming processes, shortly postdating magma emplacement at ~ 11 Ma. We propose that the synchronicity of regional tectonism, magmatism and metamorphism implies that strong crustal thickening and contraction occurred beneath the northeastern Pamir during the Middle-Late Miocene, possibly associated with initial collision between the Pamir and Tian Shan.