The palaeovegetation during Late Pliocene in the Zanda Basin, southwestern Xizang was mainly built up of dwarf half­shrub desert, steppe, sub-alpine needle-leaf forest and montane evergreen needle-leaf forest, possibly mixed with some deciduous broad-leaf forest and evergreen broad-leaf forest during that time. By comparison with the living environments of modern vegetation types, the climate was inferred as cold, arid or semi-arid to semi­humid, which might be a kind of subtropical sub­alpine one. It also shows that during Late Pliocene the lowest elevation in the basin might be a little lower than 2 500 m and the topographic form was probably similar to that of today in Zanda, which is lower in the south and higher in the north. The western plateau might be uplifted around 1 000 m from then on. Compared with that of the central Himalayan area, which is around 4 000 m suggested, this value is much smaller.