Data for the study entitled "A method for inverting denudation from the big global thermochronologic data: Example applications to the Dabie orogen, eastern China"

This data set contains 158 temperature histories that were compiled from previous publications (n = 151) [<i>Hacker et al.</i>, 2000; <i>Ratschbacher et al.</i>, 2000; <i>Reiners et al.</i>, 2003; <i>Zhou et al.</i>, 2003; <i>Xu et al.</i>, 2005; <i>Hu et al.</i>, 2006; <i>Ji et al.</i>, 2017; <i>Ding et al.</i>, 2021] and our new study (n = 7).The temperature histories compiled in this work can be divided into the following four categories, based on the corresponding methodologies for data collection and numerical modelling. (1) Most of them were derived from inverse modeling of continuous temperature history from multiple thermochronologic data of individual samples till the present [<i>Zhou et al.</i>, 2003; <i>Xu et al.</i>, 2005; <i>Hu et al.</i>, 2006; <i>Ding et al.</i>, 2021]. (2) Ten histories out of the total, derived from multi-domain diffusion modelling of Ar in K-feldspar, cover temperature and time period of the early exhumation stage, not lasting to the present-day [<i>Hacker et al.</i>, 2000; <i>Ratschbacher et al.</i>, 2000; <i>Wang et al.</i>, 2014; <i>Ji et al.</i>, 2017]. (3) Nearly 50% of temperature paths were reconstructed by joint modelling of multiple samples collected from vertical profiles [<i>Reiners et al.</i>, 2003; <i>Ding et al.</i>, 2021]. (4) A number of temperature histories were restored by plotting the thermochronologic age versus their corresponding closure temperatures [<i>Chen et al.</i>, 1995; <i>Wang and Yang</i>, 1998; <i>Grimmer et al.</i>, 2002].Those cooling histories mostly cover the time between 130-0 Ma, with a few up to 270 Ma. The compilation of the temperature histories shows three phases of relatively rapid cooling during the Cretaceous, early Cenozoic, and Late Miocene-present. Given that all host rocks are Cretaceous or older, the cooling histories have been interpreted as rock exhumation in response to tectonic deformation or denudation [<i>Hacker et al.</i>, 2000; <i>Ratschbacher et al.</i>, 2000; <i>Reiners et al.</i>, 2003; <i>Zhou et al.</i>, 2003; <i>Xu et al.</i>, 2005; <i>Hu et al.</i>, 2006; <i>Ji et al.</i>, 2017; <i>Ding et al.</i>, 2021].