So the Tibetan Plateau is old..

Well, that might be a bit of a "No Joke" moment for most folks, since most geologic formations on the earth's surface are old in comparison to a human's lifespan (discounting the more ephemeral landforms created through erosive or deposition processes). Still, I had read previously that the Tibetan Plateau was estimated to have been formed somewhere between 10-15 MYA. New research put out in Nature Geoscience indicates that it might be as old as 30 MYA, perhaps even older!

Being more of a theoretical researcher in the first place, the part that really interests me in this is the description of using Fission Track Dating (FTD) to accurately quantify the rates of temperature change in the rock strata to estimate rates of being exposed by erosion and uplift. That's so awesome! When I go for a PhD, one of the things I want access to is a mass spectrometer, it seems like a lot of the really accurate dating techniques involve using one. Dating alluvial benches is somewhat haphazard, and it would be nice to be able to constrain dates better.