Paleomagnetism of Cretaceous basalts from the East Mariana Basin, western Pacific Ocean

Abstract

Cretaceous basalts have been recovered at several ODP and DSDP sites where basement of Jurassic age was predicted. The paleomagnetic properties of 25 basalt samples from Site 802 were examined in order to establish a paleolatitude for the site at the time of basalt emplacement and to compare the results to those from DSDP Site 462. Mean natural remanent magnetization intensity for the Site 802 basalts was found to be approximately 12 A/m consistent with typical oceanic basalts. Mean stable inclination is -34.7° ± 2.2 which implies a paleolatitude of approximately 19.4°S. This is very similar to the paleolatitudes calculated for Site 462 basalts and suggests both contemporaneity of and a possible source link between the two sites. -from Authors