Paleomagnetic results from the Newer Volcanics of Victoria: Contribution to the Time Averaged Field Initiative

Abstract

The Newer Volcanics of Victoria Australia were sampled in 2001 and 2003 as part of the Time Averaged Field Initiative which is designed to provide a reliable data set for modeling the Earth's magnetic field over the past 5 My. The collection consisted of ten cores per site at 42 sites. Complete demagnetization was carried out on all samples using AF or thermal demagnetization and line fitting techniques were employed to determine the resultant vector. Thirty-two of these sites gave results that met the criterion that N ≥ 5, and α95 was less than 6°. 20 sites were reversely magnetized, Dec = 173.4°, Inc. = 54.6°, α95 = 3.8° and 13 normally magnetized, Dec = 2.1°,Inc = -62.3°, α95 = 6.3°. The data gave a global mean paleomagnetic pole (lat. 87.2°, long. 21.9° and A95 = 4.4°) which is not significantly different from the pole of rotation for the present location of Victoria and for its latitude 2.5 million years ago when most of the lavas were erupted. Copyright 2004 by the American Geophysical Union.