Record Details
Constraints on past plate and mantle motion from new ages for the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Constraints on past plate and mantle motion from new ages for the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain |
| Names |
O'Connor, John M.
(creator) Steinberger, Bernhard (creator) Regelous, Marcel (creator) Koppers, Anthony A. P. (creator) Wijbrans, Jan R. (creator) Haase, Karsten M. (creator) Stoffers, Peter (creator) Jokat, Wilfried (creator) Garbe-Schönberg, Dieter (creator) |
| Date Issued | 2013-10-04 (iso8601) |
| Note | This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the American Geophysical Union and can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291525-2027. |
| Abstract | Estimates of the relative motion between the Hawaiian and Louisville hot spots have consequences for understanding the role and character of deep Pacific-mantle return flow. The relative motion between these primary hot spots can be inferred by comparing the age records for their seamount trails. We report ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar ages for 18 lavas from 10 seamounts along the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain (HESC), showing that volcanism started in the sharp portion of the Hawaiian-Emperor Bend (HEB) at ≥47.5 Ma and continued for ≥5 Myr. The slope of the along-track distance from the currently active Hawaiian hot spot plotted versus age is constant (57 ± 2 km/Myr) between ~57 and 25 Ma in the central ~1900 km of the seamount chain, including the HEB. This model predicts an age for the oldest Emperor Seamounts that matches published ages, implying that a linear age-distance relationship might extend back to at least 82 Ma. In contrast, Hawaiian age progression was much faster since at least ~15 Ma and possibly as early as ~27 Ma. Linear age-distance relations for the Hawaii-Emperor and Louisville seamount chains predict ~300 km overall hot spot relative motion between 80 and 47.5 Ma, in broad agreement with numerical models of plumes in a convecting mantle, and paleomagnetic data. We show that a change in hot spot relative motion may also have occurred between ~55 Ma and ~50 Ma. We interpret this change in hot spot motion as evidence that the HEB reflects a combination of hot spot and plate motion changes driven by the same plate/mantle reorganization. |
| Genre | Article |
| Topic | Hot spots |
| Identifier | O'Connor, J. M., B. Steinberger, M. Regelous, A. A. P. Koppers, J. R. Wijbrans, K. M. Haase, P. Stoffers, W. Jokat, and D. Garbe-Schönberg (2013), Constraints on past plate and mantle motion from new ages for the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount Chain, Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, 14, 4564–4584. doi:10.1002/ggge.20267 |
