A comparison of zircon U-Pb age results of the Red Clay sequence on the central Chinese Loess Plateau

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 of the late Miocene-Pliocene Red Clay sequence of two neighboring sites from the Chinese Loess Plateau where similar provenance signal is expected. Although the results from the 5.5 Ma sediment support this prediction, the results from the 3 Ma sediment at these two sites differ from each other significantly. These results emphasize the importance of increasing analysis number per sample and combining the zircon U-Pb geochronology with other provenance tools in order to get reliable provenance information.