Elsevier

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

Volume 405, 1 November 2014, Pages 25-38
Earth and Planetary Science Letters

Precise ages of the Réunion event and Huckleberry Ridge excursion: Episodic clustering of geomagnetic instabilities and the dynamics of flow within the outer core

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2014.08.011Get rights and content

Highlights

  • 40Ar/39Ar ages of lavas define a singular Réunion excursion at 2.200 Ma.

  • The Feni subchron is bounded by polarity reversals at 2.153 and 2.115 Ma.

  • 40Ar/39Ar and U–Pb dating indicate age of Huckleberry Ridge excursion is 2.077 Ma.

  • A temporal clustering of dynamo instabilities resembling those of the Brunhes chron.

  • Terms “Réunion I” and “Réunion II” should be abandoned.

Abstract

The Réunion event is one of the earliest recognized periods of normal polarity within the reversed Matuyama chron. Named for the site at which it was first discovered on Réunion Island, it has since purportedly been found globally in both volcanic rocks and sediments, and thus has become a key chronostratigraphic marker. However, geochronologic results from several locations thought to have recorded this event have caused considerable confusion regarding not only its age and duration, but also the number of Réunion events. New 40Ar/39Ar ages from eight Réunion Island lavas in three distinct sections are indistinguishable from one another, thereby placing the event at 2.200±0.007/0.010 Ma (±2σ analytical/total uncertainty, note this format is used throughout the paper). The paleomagnetic behavior recorded at two of the island sites shows that the opposite (normal) polarity was reached and sustained for a period during which several lava flows were erupted. Whether this can be classified as a very short subchron bounded by a rapid set of back-to-back reversals, or as a special case of a geomagnetic excursion, is unclear. Hence, we choose to continue labeling the dynamo activity recorded by these Réunion Island lavas as an “event”. This event preceded a 38 kyr period of normal polarity that we name the Feni subchron after its locality of discovery at ODP site 981. The Feni subchron was succeeded by the Huckleberry Ridge excursion for which 40Ar/39Ar sanidine and U–Pb zircon ages of 2.077±0.001/0.003 Ma and 2.084±0.012/0.013 Ma, respectively, from member B of the Huckleberry Ridge tuff in Idaho, are in agreement. These findings suggest that the full normal polarity recorded on Réunion Island is a singular brief period of unstable field behavior at the onset of a 125 kyr bundling of dynamo instabilities from 2.20 to 2.07 Ma. Disturbances to the axial dipole component of earth's magnetic field during this period, and by analogy similar periods of temporally-clustered excursions during the early and late portions of the Brunhes chron, may reflect disruptions to convective flow arising from parcels of material introduced into the outer core from either the inner-core or core–mantle boundaries; a proposition that might be tested by future numerical dynamo simulations.

Introduction

Poorly understood physical processes within earth's core cause the geomagnetic field to undergo reversals of polarity, excursions, or events. The timing of these phenomena, particularly the number and sequence of short-lived excursions or events relative to complete polarity reversals, has long been central to debate about conditions and processes originating either in deep or shallow regions of the core that may modulate geomagnetic field stability on time scales of 105106 yr (e.g., McFadden and Merrill, 1986, Gubbins, 1999, Glatzmaier et al., 1999, Hoffman and Singer, 2008, Davies and Gubbins, 2011). The dramatic improvement during the last two decades in the radioisotopic dating of many short-lived excursions and events has led to a nascent geomagnetic instability time scale (GITS) for the Quaternary (Singer et al., 1999, Singer, 2014). Notably, this chronology has revealed a temporal clustering of excursions during the early (730–530 ka) and late (212–17 ka) portions of the Brunhes chron (Singer et al., 2008a, Singer et al., 2008b; Singer, 2014). Here, we present new geochronologic data from volcanic rocks that, together with published data from marine sediments, record a sequence of excursions, reversals, and events during 125 kyr of the early portion of the Matuyama chron. The chronology strongly suggests that dynamo instability is temporally modulated by a process that operates on a 100–200 kyr time scale. We offer one possible explanation for directional instability in the axial dipole component of the geomagnetic field for such periods of time that is based on thermodynamic analysis and modeling the effects of crystallization of the mush zone atop the outer core (Braginsky, 1963, Moffatt and Loper, 1994).

Section snippets

Previous work on the Réunion event

There is a half-century-long history related to paleomagnetic investigations on Réunion Island. The first paleomagnetic and K–Ar dating experiments on Réunion lavas revealed a normal-to-reversed polarity transition at 2.0±0.1 Ma (Chamalaun and McDougall, 1966; K–Ar ages are calculated using the updated decay constants of Steiger and Jaeger (1977). Although initially considered to be part of the Olduvai subchron (Grommé and Hay, 1971), this distinction was later changed to the “Réunion normal

Magnetic measurements

In parallel to new geochronologic experiments, new paleomagnetic directions were determined through alternating field demagnetization of standard specimens from the more than 100 lava flows previously studied from three distinct sections on Réunion Island (RSD, GC, and LM) and combined with the original dataset of Baksi and Hoffman (2000). All measurements, new and old, were conducted at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. The primary remanence directions were identified

Results

New 40Ar/39Ar ages were obtained for eight of the lava flows in the three sections previously analyzed on Réunion Island by Baksi et al. (1993) and Baksi and Hoffman (2000) (Table 1; Fig. 2; Complete argon data in Table A.3). Lavas of the RSD, GC, and LM sections record R–N–T, N–T–N, and N–T–R field behavior, respectively (Fig. 3). For most lavas, demagnetization behavior was typical for Pleistocene basalts, the process having removed the only significant secondary component of magnetization,

Untangling geomagnetic field behavior between 2.2 and 2.0 Ma

The duration of the field behavior recorded in the RSD/Réunion lavas is difficult to evaluate as lavas with normal, reversed and transitional polarity are bounded by statistically indistinguishable ages. Nevertheless, the level of uncertainty indicates a maximum duration of 10 kyr. Ohno et al. (2012) observed a number of lows in relative paleointensity between 2.8 and 2.1 Ma in a sedimentary record from the North Atlantic. These lows were accompanied by directional changes that lasted between

New vs. published ages for the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff

Our new 40Ar/39Ar age for the HRT member B is within error of the 40Ar/39Ar data of Gansecki et al. (1998), Rivera et al. (2014), and Lanphere et al. (2002). However, the Lanphere et al. (2002) age is based on sanidine total fusions and is 17 kyr older than the weighted mean of our plateau ages obtained using the Noblesse five collector mass spectrometer. This is not surprising given the presence of antecrysts in the HRT member B, coupled with the fact that Lanphere et al. (2002) performed

Implications for the geodynamo and beyond

Singer et al., 2008a, Singer et al., 2008b proposed that there are two periods during the Brunhes chron in which the dynamo is relatively weak, each lasting about 200 kyr and encompassing at least five excursions. These two periods are separated by 300 kyr during which there is little compelling evidence for excursional behavior (Singer, 2014). Singer et al., 2008a, Singer et al., 2008b hypothesized that the pattern of fluid flow within the outer core may be such that there is a 200–300 kyr

Conclusions

Based on new 40Ar/39Ar age determinations from Réunion Island, Cerro Fraile in Argentina, and Gamarri in Ethiopia, plus equivalent U–Pb zircon and 40Ar/39Ar sanidine ages for the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff, we conclude that at least two field excursions—one designated as an event having recorded full normal polarity on Réunion Island—and two polarity reversals bounding a normal subchron, occurred between 2.20 and 2.07 Ma. Specifically, these include: (1) the Réunion event at 2.200 Ma, (2) the much

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for financial support from U.S. NSF grants EAR-1250446, EAR-0943584, and EAR-0943770. Condon was supported by the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) grant agreement 215458 (GTSnext) and NIGFSC award IP/1011/1107. The Shell Corporation sponsored the Senior Honors thesis research of Macho at UW–Madison. Brown was partially supported by German DFG grant SPP 1488.

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