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Geological Society, London, Special Publications; 1993; v. 70; p. 27-37;
DOI: 10.1144/GSL.SP.1993.070.01.03
© 1993 Geological Society of London

Techniques: Chronology and Correlations

Magnetic polarity timescales: a new test

Alan E. Mussett & Alan G. McCormack

Department of Earth Sciences, University of Liverpool, PO Box 147, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK

The magnetic polarity timescale, for times older than a few million years, is based upon sea-floor spreading magnetic anomalies, but the relative ages deduced from the anomalies must be calibrated to allow for non-uniform spreading rates. Calibration is carried out by using well-dated samples of known position in the magnetic timescale, but such samples are rare. This paper presents a method for testing the accuracy of a (portion of a) proposed magnetic timescale, using a body of polarity-plus-age data unconnected with sea-floor spreading anomalies. The method also suggests how a timescale could be improved by displacing or offsetting parts of it by a constant amount.

When this method is used with data for the British Tertiary Igneous Province, the timescale of Harland et al. (1989) is found to be superior to those of Harland et al. (1982) and Berggren et al. (1985) for part of the early Tertiary period (c. 62–52 Ma). Over this interval the Harland et al. (1989) timescale is close to optimum for this data set, but it might be improved by subtracting about 0.25 Ma from the ages of all polarity boundaries.





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