Research Progress and Development Tendency of Provenance Analysis on Terrigenous Sedimentary Rocks

Key words: 
• terrigenous deposit /
• sedimentary rock

Abstract: Provenance analysis on terrigenous sedimentary rocks is significant for all of palaeogeomorphology remolding, palaeogeography reconstruction, palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate recovering, original basin resuming, sedimentary basin reappearing, depositional system analysis, sedimentary deposits forecasting, petroleum reservoir predicting, parent rock property tracing, geotectonics settings analysis, crust and geotectonics evolvement resume, and study on coupling of basin and moutains. We summarized traditional provenance analysis methods and research progress of sedimentological method, petrographic method, heavy mineral method, element geochemistry method, geochronology method, clay mineral method, fossil and biomarker method, and geophysics method. We also introduced new methods on provenance analysis of magnetic mineralogy method, mineral microtexture method upraise in recent years. Herewith, we prospect development tendency of provenance analysis: with constantly upraising of new technique and new method, provenance analysis transferring from traditional methods to modern testing technics, from single technique to colligation of multiple methods, from one subject to alliance and overlap of multiple disciplines, from qualitative analysis  to quantitative analysis. 