A volcanic sequence almost 700 meters thick has been sampled in the Punaruu valley on the island of
Tahiti, southern central Pacific Ocean. Detailed paleomagnetic results have been obtained from 123 sites. Three
reversals are recorded in this sequence. Age determinations (K-Ar) indicate that the youngest reversal corresponds
to the...
We report the behavior of the earth's magnetic field for a transition recorded in lavas at the volcanic island of
Huahine in French Polynesia, south-central Pacific Ocean. Detailed intermediate fields are observed that record an
apparent N-N excursion. The available K-Ar ages indicate that most volcanic rocks of the southern...
Cobb hotspot, currently located beneath Axial seamount on the Juan de Fuca ridge, has the temporal
but not the isotopic characteristics usually attributed to a mantle plume. The earlier volcanic products of
the hotspot, from eight volcanoes in the Cobb-Eickelberg seamount (CES) chain, show a westward age
progression away from...
Crystallization ages of volcanic rocks, dredged or drilled from the Walvis Ridge (ten sites) and the Rio
Grande Rise (one site), have been determined by the ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar incremental heating technique. The
fundamentally age-progressive distribution of these basement ages suggests a common hot spot source for
volcanism on the island of...
Persistent, long‐lived, stationary sites of excessive mantle melting are called hotspots. Hotspots leave volcanic trails on lithospheric plates passing across them. The global constellation of fixed hotspots thus forms a convenient frame of reference for plate motions, through the orientations and age distributions of volcanic trails left by these melting...
The Marquesas archipelago is a short. NW-SE trending cluster of islands and seamounts that formed as a result of volcanic activity over a weak hotspot. This volcanic chain lies at the northern margin of a broad region of warm and compositionally diverse mantle that melts to build several other subparallel...
We report new major element, trace element, isotope ratio, and geochronological data on the Galapagos
Archipelago. Magmas erupted from the large western volcanos are generally moderately fractionated tholeiites of
uniform composition; those erupted on other islands are compositionally diverse, ranging from tholeiites to picritic
basanitoids. While these volcanoes do not...
Determination of reliable crystallization ages by
K-Ar methods for young (<1 Ma), fresh basalts from the
seafloor has been frustrated by several effects. The small
amounts of radiogenic ⁴⁰Ar developed over these timescales in
such low-K rocks are difficult to resolve from predominantly
atmospheric ⁴⁰Ar. An additional concern is that...
The island of Tahiti, the largest in French Polynesia, comprises two major volcanoes aligned NW-SE, parallel with the general trend of the Society Islands hotspot track. Rocks form this volcanic system are basalts transitional to tholeiites, alkali basalts, basanites, picrites, and evolved lavas. Through K-Ar radiometric dating we have established...
Satellite altimeter measurements of marine gravity reveal 100 to 200-km
wavelength lineations over a wide area of the Pacific plate oriented roughly in the direction of
absolute plate motion. At least three mechanisms have been proposed for their origin: smallscale
convective rolls aligned in the direction of absolute plate motion...