Current Status of the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic APTS from Continental Sediments and Correlation with Standard Marine Stages

Abstract:

A reproducible geomagnetic polarity template for the Late Triassic and earliest Jurassic continues to be that determined from ~5,000 meters of cored section in the Newark basin and ~2,500 meters of outcrop section in the Hartford basin, sampled at nominal ~20 kyr intervals according to a well-developed climate cyclicity that characterizes the lacustrine strata present in all but the fluviatile portions of the basins [Kent & Olsen, 1999, 2008 JGR]. The age model is based on the 405 kyr Milankovich climate cycle and pegging the sequence to high precision U-Pb dating of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) at 201.6 to 200.9 Ma [Blackburn+2013 Science], the initiation of which is practically coincident with the end-Triassic extinction level (formerly set to 202 Ma) and within a climatic precession cycle after magnetochron E23r. The resulting astrochronostratigraphic polarity time scale (APTS) has 66 Poisson-distributed polarity intervals from chrons E8r (~225 Ma) to H27n (~199 Ma) with a constant sediment-accumulation rate extrapolation to chron E1r (~233 Ma). Magnetostratigraphic correlations from the most complete and usually the thickest Tethyan marine sections suggest that the Carnian/Norian boundary occurs within ~E7n [Channell+2003 PPP; Muttoni+2004 GSAB] at an APTS age of 227.5 Ma and for the Norian/Rhaetian boundary anywhere from E16n [Husing+2011 EPSL] at ~210.5 Ma to E20r [Maron+2014 Geology] at ~205.4 Ma depending on choice of conodont taxa, whereas the Hettangian/Sinemurian boundary can be placed at ~199.5 Ma within the marine equivalent of H25r [Husing+2014 EPSL]. These APTS ages are in substantive agreement with available high-precision dates in marine strata for the late Carnian [231 Ma: Furin+2006 Geology], latest Norian [205.5 Ma: Wotslaw+2014 Geology], and the boundaries of the Triassic/Jurassic [201.3 Ma: Guex+2012 PPP] and the Hettangian/Sinemurian [199.5 Ma: Schaltegger+2008 EPSL]. Carnian magnetostratigraphy needs to be improved but attempts to make a composite magnetostratigraphic sequence for the Late Triassic by merging disparate marine and non-marine records have not produced a clearer signal. The Newark-Hartford APTS already provides a framework for long-distance correlation and dating, for example, the timing of dinosaur dispersal across Pangea [Kent+2014 PNAS].