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Evidence from episodic seamount volcanism for pulsing of the Iceland plume in the past 70 Myr

Nature volume 408, pages 954–958 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The North Atlantic volcanic province has been attributed to continental rifting about 60 Myr ago over an Iceland plume head with a diameter of 1,000–2,000 km (refs 1, 2). But evidence from a few igneous centres3,4 has been used to infer that earlier plume activity occurred in this region. The three seamounts in the Rockall trough off the Atlantic coast of Scotland are among the few accessible remnants of such early plume activity. Here we present 40Ar–39Ar incremental-heating ages of samples from these seamounts, which show that volcanism began there in the late Cretaceous period (70 ± 1 Myr ago), and then continued for the next 30 Myr in at least four discrete phases: 62, 52, 47 and 42 Myr ago. We relate this activity to pulsing of large masses (∼108 km3) of hot Iceland plume material on timescales of 5–10 Myr. This significantly extends the time span for Iceland plume activity both backwards and forwards in time, and provides a possible alternative to the ‘plume head’ models for the formation of continental flood basalts.

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Figure 1: Predicted topography map of the North Atlantic region.
Figure 2: Locations and 40Ar–39Ar ages of Rockall trough dredge samples.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Captain Gross and the crew of FS Poseidon, along with the scientific party, for ship handling and support during sampling, and T. Arpe and D. Garbe-Schoenberg for ICP-MS data. LDEO supplied a Rosemary bank rock sample. J.O'C. was affiliated to AWI-Bremerhaven during much of this study. This work was supported by the DFG.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geomar - Research Center for Marine Geosciences, Wischhofstrasse 1-3, Kiel, D-24148, Germany

    J. M. O'Connor

  2. Institute for Geosciences, Christian-Albrechts University, Kiel, D-24118, Germany

    P. Stoffers

  3. Department of Isotope Geochemistry Vrije University, Amsterdam, 1081 HV, The Netherlands

    J. R. Wijbrans

  4. Department of Geology, University College Dublin, Belfield 4, Dublin, Ireland

    P. M. Shannon & T. Morrissey

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  1. J. M. O'Connor
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Correspondence to J. M. O'Connor.

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O'Connor, J., Stoffers, P., Wijbrans, J. et al. Evidence from episodic seamount volcanism for pulsing of the Iceland plume in the past 70 Myr. Nature 408, 954–958 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35050066

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