Provenance ages of cretaceous strata in the songliao basin, Northeast China inferred from fission track data

The Songliao Basin in northeast China is an intra-continental fossil rift basin mainly developed from the latest Jurassic and throughout the Cretaceous. The Daqing oil field in the basin is one of the largest hydrocarbon exploitation areas in China. A fission track (FT) study has been carried out on sandstone well samples in the Songliao Basin to constrain the depositional ages of Cretaceous strata and to ascertain their source region. FT dating also has been carried out on welded tuffs in the Dahinganling Mountains to determine their eruption ages. The detrital zircon FT age suggests that the depositional age of the middle Quantou Formation is younger than 109 Ma. Zircon FT ages for Cretaceous strata (from the Nenjiang Formation to the Quantou Formation) suggest that the source region has a fairly homogeneous cooling history at ∼120-100 Ma. Eruption ages of welded tuffs in the Dahinganling Mountains show an age range from 110 to 92 Ma. The regional geology and FT data suggest that volcanic rocks in the Dahinganling Mountains were eroded soon after their deposition and were reworked toward the Songliao basin.