Tracking a common mantle source: From southwest Iberia to the Madeira-Canarias Islands

Abstract

Paleogeographic reconstructions across the Central-East Atlantic Alkaline Province (CEAAP) reveal that a stationary super-plume, ponded at the mantle transition zone since the Late Cretaceous, is responsible for the irregular spatial-temporal distribution of magmatism across the mobile Iberian microplate and the northwest of the African plate. The mantle upwelling affecting the Southwest Iberian Margin (SWIM) (103–70 Ma) shows cogenetic paleogeographic affinities with subsequent magmatism in Morocco (57–45 Ma) and Madeira- Canarias (<32 Ma), resulting in episodic intra-plate magmatic activity both on oceanic and continental settings. The model indicates that the intermittent emission of plumelets resulted in the emplacement of distinct and correlative clusters of magmatism in each sector. Additionally, our results suggest that plumelet dragging may be responsible for the rejuvenated magmatism along the Canarias, Madeira, and Tore regions. On the Sahara Seamounts (142–75? Ma) and the Moroccan Atlas (<11 Ma), the combined paleogeographic reconstructions point to distinct magmatic sources, independent from the initial SWIM super-plume. Edge-driven convective models are not required to explain the conspicuous spatial-temporal distribution of magmatism across the continent-ocean domains of the CEAAP.