Magnetostratigraphic, grain-size, cyclostratigraphic and palynological data from the Eocene Xining Basin, China

The data is part of a manuscript entitled: "Loess-like dust appearance at 40 Ma in Central China" by Niels Meijer, Guillaume Dupont-Nivet, Natasha Barbolini, Amber Woutersen, Alexander Rohrmann, Yang Zhang, Xiang-Jun Liu, Alexis Licht, Hemmo A. Abels, Carina Hoorn, Rik Tjallingii, Christoff Andermann, Michael Dietze and Norbert Nowaczyk.

Samples were collected during four field campaigns in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 as part of the MAGIC project (ERC 649081). Samples were collected from the following outcrop sections: Baimasi (36.52°N, 102.10°E, 2140 m elevation), Caijia (36.62°N, 101.98°E, 2480 m elevation), Tiefo (36.58°N, 101.88°E, 2230 m elevation), Shuiwan (36.66°N, 101.87°E, 2330 m elevation) and Xiejia (36.52°N, 101.87°E, 2450 m elevation). The datasets include: 1) Characteristic Remanent Magnetization (ChRM) directions of the Baimasi section used for magnetostratigraphy, 2) X-Ray Fluorescence and CIElab color records of the Caijia section used for cyclostratigraphic time series analysis, 3) grain-size distributions and end-member modeling of the Baimasi, Caijia, Xiejia, Tiefo and Shuiwan sections, 4) compilation of new palynomorph counts of the Tiefo and Xiejia sections combined with counts from previous studies from the Tiefo, Xiejia and Shuiwan sections.