Age Dependent Absolute Plate and Plume Motion Modeling

Abstract:

Current absolute plate motion (APM) models from 80 – 0 Ma are constrained by the location of mantle plume related hotspot seamounts, in particular those of the Hawaiian-Emperor and Louisville seamount trails. Originally the 'fixed' hotspot hypothesis was developed to explain past plate motion based on linear age progressive intra-plate volcanism. However, now that ‘moving’ hotspots are accepted, it is becoming clear that APM models need to be corrected for individual plume motion vectors. For older seamount trails that were active between roughly 50 and 80 Ma the APM models that use ‘fixed’ hotspots overestimate the measured age progression in those trails, while APM models corrected for ‘moving’ hotspots underestimate those age progressions. These mismatches are due to both a lack of reliable ages in the older portions of both the Hawaii and Louisville seamount trails and insufficient APM modeling constraints from other seamount trails in the Pacific Basin. Seamounts are difficult to sample and analyze because many are hydrothermally altered and have low potassium concentrations.

New ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar Age results from International Ocean Drilling Project (IODP) Expedition 330 Sites U1372 (n=18), U1375 (n=3), U1376 (n=15) and U1377 (n=7) aid in constraining the oldest end of the Louisville Seamount trail. A significant observation in this study is that the age range recovered in the drill cores match the range of ages that were acquired on dredging cruises at the same seamounts (e.g. Koppers et al., 2011). This is important for determining the inception age of a seamount. The sections recovered from IODP EXP 330 are in-situ volcanoclastic breccia and lava flows. Comparing the seismic interpretations of Louisville guyots (Contreras-Reyes et al., 2010), Holes U1372, U1373 and U1374 penetrated the extrusive and volcanoclastic sections of the seamount. The ages obtained are consistent over stratigraphic intervals >100-450 m thick, providing evidence that these seamounts construct rapidly and represent a time period close to the inception age of the seamount, thus by proxy also the hotspot location. Here we present a new age dependent plate motion model that tests the 'fixed' and 'moving' hotspot hypotheses.