Wu Guoxuan, Wang Kaifa
The Quaternary deposits in the northwest of the Chaidam Basin are made up saline lick such as halite, gypsum, gypsum clays, sal mirabile, silts and carbonatite clays. The spores and pollen fossils of bush and grnss from the above deposits are mainly Ephedra. Artemisia, Chenopodiaceae, Gramineae and Nitraria ect. The arboroid pollens include usually Pinus, Quercus, Salix, Ulmus, Betula,Alnus, Picea and Abies, with a low perce- ntage. According to the variations in the sporo-pollen assemblages, the Quaternary deposits in the northwest of the Chaidam Basin can be divided into 10 sporo-pollen fossil zones. These 10 zones represented the paleoclimate change phases there, although all of them were of the desert vegetation type. Five cold epoches have been distinguished and compared with the glacial epoches of the North Tianshan, Xinjiang, and the East of China in the Quaternary.