Supplementary Tables.xlsx

In response to the westward subduction of the Paleo-Pacific, the North China Craton witnessed the uplift of eastern coastal plateau and subsequent thinning in the Early Cretaceous, which potentially gave rise to a shift in the climatic pattern. In this study, we use the oxygen isotopes of garnets from magmatic-hydrothermal ore systems to infer the origins and signatures of mineralization fluids prior to the thinning event. The dataset shows a wide range of δ¹⁸O (-11.4 to +11.7‰) of garnet in North China Craton and adjacent areas. Notably, extremely depleted oxygen isotopes (<-3‰) are exclusively found in its northern margin, the hinterland of the continental arc, indicating extensive involvement of meteoric and lacustrine fluid. This hinterland hosted plutons suggesting back-arc rifting and thinning, and a series of lacustrine sedimentary basins. This geological record aligns with climate modeling exhibiting that coastal plateau amplified eastward transport of moisture from tropical Tethyan Ocean. The long-distance transport strongly depleted ¹⁸O and ²H (D). As the cratonic lithosphere thinned and the coastal plateau subsided, the Pacific regime exerted a stronger control over the climatic pattern of the majority of East Asia.