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The retreat of the Tethys Sea and the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau play the critical roles in driving Asian climatic changes during the Cenozoic. In the Pamir-Tien Shan convergence zone, over 3000 m of Cenozoic successions, consisting of marine deposits in the lower, continental clay and fine sand in the middle, and molasse in the upper part, record the evolution of the Tethys Sea, the Asian aridification, and the deformation of the Pamir. In this work, the existing biostratigraphic subdivisions and new electronic spinning resonance dating results were used to assign ages to formations within the Ulugqat section. Sedimentary facies analysis and multi-proxy indices were used to reconstruct the paleo-environmental evolution. The results show: (1) the Pamir-Tien Shan convergence zone has undergone progressive environmental changes from shallow marine before similar to 34 Ma to arid land at similar to 23 Ma and finally to inter-mountain basin by similar to 5.3 Ma; (2) the overall increase in mean size of grains, decrease in redness, in magnetic susceptibility, and in proportion of the ultrafine component of the sediments studied revealed a long-term strengthening in potential energy to transporting medium, cooling, and enhanced continental aridity, respectively; (3) the easternmost edge of the Tethys Sea prevailed in the western Tarim Basin from late Cretaceous to early Cenozoic, and finally retreated from this region around the Eocene-Oligocene transition, which in turn strengthened the Asian aridification; (4) accumulation of molasse with an upper age of Ma suggests that the deformation front of the Pamir migrated to this area at or before that time. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.