Reconciling Cretaceous paleomagnetic and marine magnetic data for Iberia: New Iberian paleomagnetic poles

Abstract

The Cretaceous paleogeography and the kinematic evolution of the Iberian plate are poorly constrained. Especially problematic is to reconcile Iberian paleomagnetic data with paleomagnetic data of the neighboring plates and with Euler poles derived from seafloor magnetic anomalies. The first limitation arises from the Cretaceous Normal Polarity Superchron where paleogeographic reconstruction using marine magnetic anomalies is handicapped. The second arises from the paucity of reliable paleomagnetic poles with satisfactory statistical criteria and age. In order to address these shortcomings and provide new high quality paleomagnetic poles for Iberia, we conducted a detailed rock magnetic and paleomagnetic study of two Cretaceous magmatic sills, the Paço de Ilhas (PI) and Foz da Fonte (FF) sills, from the Lusitanian Basin, Portugal, recently dated at about 88 and 94 Ma, respectively. Our results show that the magnetic mineralogy of the sills is primary, i.e., acquired during magma cooling, and essentially represented by titanomagnetite. The corresponding paleomagnetic poles match the synthetic APWP from the African plate at 80 and 100 Ma. On the basis of a rigorous selection of Iberian Cretaceous poles, we then calculated mean paleomagnetic poles for different time intervals and found that Iberian paleomagnetic data fit well the global APWP between 70 and 120 Ma, but move far away from the APWP at pre-rift times. Our approach shows that new and better constrained paleomagnetic poles can aide in solving part of the contradiction between Iberian and African APWPs.