The Kamikatsura event and the Matuyama-Brunhes reversal recorded in lavas from Tjörnes Peninsula, northern

• Main Authors: P. Camps, B. S. Singer, C. Carvallo, A. Goguitchaichvili, G. Fanjat, B. Allen
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: Tjörnes; Iceland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.393.5777; http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/61/85/15/PDF/Camps-epsl2011.pdf

We report paleomagnetic results from four overlapping stratigraphic sections (55 flows) through the lava pile in Tjörnes peninsula (North Iceland). The initial aim of our study was to check the existence of intermediate directions previously interpreted as belonging to the Matuyama-Brunhes geomagnetic reversal (MBR), and complete this record with Thellier-Thellier paleointensity determinations and 40 Ar / 39 Ar radioisotopic dating. The directional results corroborate the findings by Kristjansson et al. [1]: a sequence of reversed, transitional, normal, and transitional polarity (R-T-N-T) is found in each section. The polarity change is characterized by a jump from reversed virtual geomagnetic poles (VGPs) to a quasi-cluster of transitional VGPs located over China, followed by a second jump to a cluster of normal polarity before moving again towards intermediate polarities. Reversely magnetized flows exhibit a magnetic mineralogy well suited for paleointensity determination. Of these 25 flows, 20 yielded paleointensity estimates of good quality. Unfortunately, the systematic presence of coarse multidomain (MD) titanomagnetite in the transitional and normal polarity flows hampered paleointensity estimates for these flows. The Virtual Dipole Moments (VDM) calculated for