HR: 08:51h
AN: GP51A-04 [Abstracts]
TI: Mono Lake Excursion Reviewed
AU: * Liddicoat, J C
EM: jliddico@barnard.edu
AF: Barnard College, Department of Environmental Science, New York, NY 10027, United
States
AU: Coe, R S
EM: rcoe@pmc.ucsc.edu
AF: University of California, Santa Cruz, Earth Sciences Department, Santa Cruz, CA 95064,
United States
AB:
The Mono Lake Excursion as recorded in the Mono Basin, CA, has an older part that is about negative 30 degrees
inclination and about 300 degrees declination during low relative field intensity. Those paleomagnetic directions
are closely followed by greater than 80 degrees positive inclination and east declination of about 100 degrees
during higher relative field intensity. A path of the Virtual Geomagnetic Poles (VGPs) for the older part followed
from old to young forms a large clockwise loop that reaches 35 degrees N latitude and is centered at about 35
degrees E longitude. That loop is followed by a smaller one that is counterclockwise and centered at about 70
degrees N latitude and 270 degrees E longitude (Denham & Cox, 1971; Denham, 1974; Liddicoat & Coe, 1979).
The Mono Lake Excursion outside the Mono Basin in western North America is recorded as nearly the full
excursion at Summer Lake, OR (Negrini et al., 1984), and as the younger portion of steep positive inclination/east
declination in the Lahontan Basin, NV. The overall relative field intensity during the Mono Lake Excursion in the
Lahontan Basin mirrors very closely the relative field intensity in the Mono Basin (Liddicoat, 1992, 1996; Coe &
Liddicoat, 1994). Using 14C and 40Ar/39Ar dates (Kent et al., 2002) and paleoclimate and relative paleointensity
records (Zimmerman et al., 2006) for the Mono Lake Excursion in the Mono Basin, it has been proposed that the
Mono Lake Excursion might be older than originally believed and instead be the Laschamp Excursion at about
40,000 yrs B.P. (Guillou et al., 2004). On the contrary, we favor a younger age for the Mono Lake Excursion, about
32,000 yrs B.P., using the relative paleointensity in the Mono Basin and Lahontan Basin and 14C dates from the
Lahontan Basin (Benson et al., 2002). The age of about 32,000 yrs B.P. is also in accord with the age (32,000-
34,000 yrs B.P.) reported by Channell (2006) for the Mono Lake Excursion at ODP Site 919 in the Irminger Basin
in the North Atlantic Ocean, which contains as well an excursion lower in the core at about 40,000 yrs B.P. that he
identifies as the Laschamp Excursion. The paths of VGPs for the Irminger Basin and the younger half of the Mono
Lake Excursion in the Mono Basin are similar in that they are counterclockwise loops and nearly adjacent to each
other, and quite different from the VGP path for the Laschamp Excursion.
DE: 1513 Geomagnetic excursions
DE: 1521 Paleointensity
DE: 1522 Paleomagnetic secular variation
SC: Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism [GP]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly