Early Cenozoic paleontological assemblages and provenance evolution of the Lishui Sag, East China Sea

The East China Sea Shelf Basin generated a series of back-arc basins with thick successions of marine-and terrestrial-facies sediments during Cenozoic. It is enriched with abundant oil and gas resources and is of great significance to the petroleum exploration undertakings. Therein, the Lishui Sag formed fan delta, fluvial delta and littoral-to-neritic facies sediments during Paleocene–Eocene, and the research on its sedimentary environment and sediment source was controversial. This study analyzed the paleontological combination characteristics, and conducted a source-to-sink comparative analysis to restore the sedimentary environment and provenance evolution of the Lishui Sag during Paleocene–Eocene based on the integration of detrital zircon U-Pb age spectra patterns with paleontological assemblages. The results indicated that Lishui Sag was dominated by littoral and neritic-facies environment during time corroborated by large abundance of foraminifera, calcareous nannofossils and dinoflagellates. Chronological analysis of detrital zircon U-Pb revealed that there were significant differences in sediment sources between the east and west area of the Lishui Sag. The western area was featured by deeper water depths in the Paleocene–Eocene, and the sediment was characterized by a single Yanshanian peak of zircon U-Pb age spectra, and mainly influenced from Yanshanian magmatic rocks of South China Coast and the surrounding paleo-uplifts. However, its eastern area partly showed Indosinian populations. In particular, the upper Eocene Wenzhou sediments were featured by increasingly plentiful Precambrian zircons in addition to the large Indosinian-Yanshanian peaks, indicating a possible impact from the Yushan Low Uplift to the east.Therefore, it is likely that the eastern Lishui Sag generated large river systems as well as deltas during time. Due to the Yuquan Movement, the Lishui Sag experienced uplifting and exhumation in the late stage of the late Eocene and was not deposited with sediments until Miocene. Featured by transitional-facies depositions of Paleocene–Eocene, the Lishui Sag thus beared significant potential for source rock and oil-gas reservoir accumulation.