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The closed inland Qaidam Basin in the NE Tibetan Plateau contains possibly the world's thickest (∼12,000 m) continuous sequence of Cenozoic fluviolacustrine sedimentary rocks. This sequence contains considerable information on the history of Tibetan uplift and associated climatic change. However, work within Qaidam Basin has been held back by a paucity of precise time constraints on this sequence. Here we report on a detailed paleomagnetic study of the well exposed 4570 m Huaitoutala section along the Keluke anticline in the northeastern Qaidam Basin, where three distinct faunas were recovered and identified from the middle Miocene through Pliocene. Constrained by these faunal ages, the observed thirty-three pairs of normal and reversed polarity zones can be readily correlated with chrons 2n-5Br of the GPTS. This study assigns the age of the section to the interval between ca. 15.7 Ma to 1.8 Ma. In …