Paleomagnetism of Permian-Triassic volcanic sequences from Son La province, northwest Vietnam

Nineteen sites with 198 oriented-core samples have been collected from the Upper Permian-Lower Triassic volcanic rocks of Vien Nam Formation at Quynh Nhai locality, Son La Province, northwestern Vietnam. The characteristic remanent magnetization components carried by magnetite and hematite were successfully isolated from secondary components reveal a mean paleomagnetic direction Ds = 48.3°, Is = -10.0°, a95 = 8.0°, corresponding to a virtual geomagnetic pole located at l = 35.7°N, f = 217.4°E and a paleo-latitude of study area situated at 5.1°S during the Permian time. Compared with the Late Permian-Early Triassic pole of the South China Block (SCB), the data show that crustal elements of NW Vietnam have been close to, but not unequivocally a coherent part of the SCB, since the Late Permian. Development of the parallel NW-SE striking Song Ma and Song Chay orogenic belts did not involve the closure of wide (> 500 km) ocean basins.

Paleomagnetism of Permian-Triassic volcanic sequences from Son La province, northwest Vietnam

Nineteen sites with 198 oriented-core samples have been collected from the Upper Permian-Lower Triassic volcanic rocks of Vien Nam Formation at Quynh Nhai locality, Son La Province, northwestern Vietnam. The characteristic remanent magnetization components carried by magnetite and hematite were successfully isolated from secondary components reveal a mean paleomagnetic direction Ds = 48.3°, Is = -10.0°, a95 = 8.0°, corresponding to a virtual geomagnetic pole located at l = 35.7°N, f = 217.4°E and a paleo-latitude of study area situated at 5.1°S during the Permian time. Compared with the Late Permian-Early Triassic pole of the South China Block (SCB), the data show that crustal elements of NW Vietnam have been close to, but not unequivocally a coherent part of the SCB, since the Late Permian. Development of the parallel NW-SE striking Song Ma and Song Chay orogenic belts did not involve the closure of wide (> 500 km) ocean basins.

Magnetostratigraphy from the Hominin Sites Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) drill cores, low latitudes reorientation

<p>The Hominin Sites Paleolakes Drilling project (HSPDP) has collected around 2000 meters of drilled cores in lake sediment in Kenya and Ethiopia. All cores were drilled near important sites in human evolution with as main goal to help us better understand the influence of climate change on our evolutionary past.</p><p>An important first step in this research is building an age-model for these cores with magnetostratigraphy being important building block. However, building a magnetostratigraphy for the HSPDP cores is not straightforward. Due to the rotational movement of the coring process the azimuthal orientations of the cores is lost. This hinders the construction of magnetostratigraphy based of correctly orientated paleomagnetic samples. For high latitudes a high quality magnetostratigraphy can be reconstructed on the basis of the inclination of the paleomagnetic direction.</p><p>However, at low latitudes near the equator the inclination of the (paleo) magnetic field are near zero. As a result a magnetostratigraphy on the basis of inclination alone cannot be made.</p><p>In this presentation we discuss two methods that can be used to build a core based magnetostratigraphy at low latitudes. First, the anisotropy of the magnetic susceptibility (AMS) can be used in certain cases to reorientate the paleomagnetic samples by identifying the bedding of the sediments throughout the core.</p><p>Second, the present/recent low temperatures –low coercivity (LT/LC) overprint can be used to reorientate the paleomagnetic directions by orientating these LT/LC components towards the north and recalculate the paleomagnetic directions.</p><p>Both methods have been used on the ICDP Hominin Sites Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) cores taken in Ethiopia and Kenia with varied success. Here we will present data of four HSPDP cores as case study to help illustrate the effectiveness of these two methods for building a magnetostratigraphy for low latitude cores.</p>

The first definition of paleointensity in the Early Cretaceous basalts from the Franz Josef Land

<p>We present the first definition of paleointesity of the Earth’s magnetic field that were obtained in the Early Cretaceous igneous rocks from the Franz Josef Land archipelago (Hooker and Scott Kelty Islands). The age of magmatism was determined by U-Pb method as the Early Cretaceous, about 125 Ma. A mean paleomagnetic direction for these rocks was calculated as D=40.2 deg, I=75.5 deg, a95=2.1 deg, k=89.3, N=52. A corresponding paleomagnetic pole is now located at Plat=69.0 deg; Plon=180.3 deg, A95=3.7 deg. An assessment of the domain structure of ferrimagnets using the Day plot diagram shows that the carriers of the natural remanent magnetization are pseudo-single-domain grains of titanomagnetites with varying Ti-content. Magnetic remanence was unblocked in temperatures of 350-400 °C. Some samples are characterized by unblocking temperatures of 560 °C. The determinations of the absolute values of paleointensity were obtained by the Thellier-Coe method with the implementation of the procedure "check-points". The values of B<sub>anc</sub> vary within 8.4–16 µT, which is noticeably lower than the current magnetic field at the sampling point ≈55 µT. The corresponding VDMs of 1.13–2.25 × 10<sup>22</sup> Am<sup>2</sup>, with the current value of VDM ≈8 × 10<sup>22</sup> Am<sup>2</sup>. Numerous basalt flows are well studied by paleomagnetic and rockmagnetic methods, together with a large number of geochronological definitions, this makes basalts from the Franz Josef Land promising for obtaining new qualitative determinations of paleointensity in the Early Cretaceous time.</p><p>This work was supported by the RSF (project no. 19-17-00091) and the RFBR (project nos. 18-35-00273, 18-05-70035).</p>

Links between remagnetizations and superchrons. New experiments and new results.

<p>Chemical widespread remagnetizations are especially frequents during superchrons. An interesting issue is whether this relationship is due to especial requirements of the mechanism of acquisition of the remagnetizations and their timing. One example of this type of remagnetizations during a superchron is the one recorded by the Jurassic carbonates from the Central High Atlas (CHA) in Morocco. This normal polarity overprint has been dated ca 100 Ma, comparing the remagnetization direction with the African APWP, i.e. during the Cretaceous Normal Superchron (CNS) and also during the extensional stage of these inverted basins.</p><p>After several paleomagnetic studies performed in this area in the framework of a big research project, paleomagnetic and rock magnetic data from a set of more than 600 paleomagnetic sites distributed over an area of 10000 km2 are available. The CHA cretaceous remagnetization has been observed in all these sites with the same magnetic properties: a viscous paleomagnetic component with maximum unblocking temperatures of 200-250ºC and the remagnetization normal polarity component up to 450–500ºC. Both are carried by authigenic uniaxial SSD magnetite. The paleomagnetic direction calculated by small circle intersection method (SCI) is also similar in the different locations of this wide area.</p><p>The mechanism proposed for this type of widespread remagnetization is the generation of magnetite grains due to the heating related with burial. The homogeneous direction of the remagnetization seems to suggest an acquisition for a short event at 100 Ma. However, the extensional stage of these basins lasts tens of millions years keeping the necessary burial conditions for growth of magnetite grains covering several polarity chrons including the CNS.</p><p>In this work we address the question of timing under with these processes happened, i.e. short vs. long remagnetization periods. We propose the hypothesis that the ca. 100 Ma paleomagnetic direction shows by the remagnetization is just the average of magnetic moments of the entire SSD magnetite population that grow from the Middle Jurassic up to the Cenozoic. Grains block the magnetic moments when they grow above their critical volume, keeping the magnetic polarity generating over time a distribution of grains in normal and reverse polarity groups. To test this hypothesis we develop 1) simulations for the calculation of magnetization directions assuming a homogeneous and constant growth of magnetite crystals and 2) rock magnetic experiments to demonstrate the presence of SSD magnetite grains with opposed magnetic moments. These experiments intend to assess the effectiveness of the SSD grains carrying the remagnetization by comparing the NRM and the ARM signal through the pseudo-Thellier approach.</p>

Preferred orientation of ferromagnetic phases in rock-forming minerals: insights from magnetic anisotropy of single crystals

In the early days of paleomagnetism, David Strangway was interested in understanding why igneous rocks are faithful recorders of the Earth’s magnetic field. He recognized that ferromagnetic (s.l.) grains that could be discerned by optical microscopy were too large to carry a stable remanent magnetization, and speculated whether fine-grained, ferromagnetic (s.l.) inclusions or exsolutions in silicate minerals are responsible. When these inclusions or exsolutions are randomly oriented, or the silicate hosts are randomly oriented in a rock, they can be a good recorder of the field. If these minerals, however, show an alignment within the silicate host, and the host is preferentially aligned due to flow structures or deformation, then the paleomagnetic direction and paleointensity could be biased. We examine the magnetic anisotropy arising from the ferromagnetic (s.l.) phases in silicate-host minerals. Single crystals of phyllosilicate, clinopyroxene, and calcite show most consistent ferrimagnetic fabric with relation to the minerals’ crystallographic axes, whereas olivine and feldspar display only a weak relationship. No discernable relationship is found between the ferrimagnetic anisotropy and crystallographic axes for amphibole minerals. Our results have implications when single crystals are being used for either studies of field direction or paleointensity or in cases where silicate minerals have a preferential orientation. Phyllosilicate minerals and pyroxene should be screened for significant magnetic anisotropy.

A new method for calculating the locality mean direction of a paleomagnetic fold test

This paper proposes a new method to calculate a locality mean by using Fisher statistic in paleomagnetic research. The new method uses α95 in defining a weight for each site mean. Previously, a unit weight is given to all site means which may lead to wrong a locality mean due to some site means having large α95s. The interpretation of this erroneously calculated paleomagnetic direction will locate the area being investigated in the incorrect paleolatitude. Besides giving more accurate paleomagnetic directions, the locality mean directions derived from this new method give more consistent paleomagnetic fold test results, especially in deformed areas.