Methods and Development Trend of Provenance Analysis

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 mountains. Source rocks of provenance analysis have several types, which include terrigenous source rocks, volcanic magma source rocks, metamorphic source rocks, exogenous source rocks and mixed source rocks. Based on the retrieval and a vast amount of literature research, the author 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 and its research progress.And the future development trend of the provenance analysis has been predicted. With the constant innovation and emergence of new technology and new method, the provenance analysis will be shifted from traditional methods to the modern testing technology methods, from a single method to the integrated approach, from single discipline changes to multidisciplinary cross combination, and from the qualitative analysis to quantitative analysis.