Palaeo-climate and -topography of the continental orogen: Theoretical inversion with initial oxygen isotopes of ancient meteoric water

ABSTRACT Ancient environments have been mostly reconstructed with exogenous records, yet the potential constraints from endogenous archives were less emphasised. It has been well known that the outer- and inner-spheres of the planetary Earth are naturally linked and/or interplayed each other among geospheres. As stable isotopes of the meteoric water are globally dependent upon precipitating environments, rocks and/or minerals hydrothermally altered by the meteoric water can thus imprint environmental information of continental settings. These valuable clues, however, have been intuitively and/or qualitatively inferred up to now. On the basis of an innovative procedure recently proposed for dealing with thermodynamic re-equilibration of oxygen isotopes between constituent minerals and water from fossil hydrothermal systems, ancient meteoric waters are theoretically inverted from the early Cretaceous post-collisional granitoid and Triassic gneissic country rocks across the Dabie orogen in central-eastern China. The initial oxygen isotopes of ancient meteoric water (i.e., $\delta ^{18}O_W^i$ value hereafter) range from −11.01 ± 0.43 (one standard deviation, 1SD) to −7.61 ± 0.07‰ in this study, yet systematically and/or statistically deviating from modern local precipitation. These imply that either palaeoclimate could be colder than the present at least during the early Cretaceous or palaeoaltimetry has geographically varied across the Dabie orogen since the Triassic. Moreover, the lifetime of fossil hydrothermal systems is kinetically quantified to less than 1.2 million years (Myr) for the concurrent lowering of oxygen isotopes of hydrothermally altered rock-forming minerals through the surface-reaction oxygen exchange with ancient meteoric waters herein. Our results thus suggest that palaeoenvironments of the continental orogen can be scientifically and methodologically unearthed from endogenous archives and theoretical inversion of $\delta ^{18}O_W^i$ values can be quantitatively applied beyond the Dabie orogen.