Open AccessCalculating palaeomagnetic poles for oceanic plates
Author(s) -
Gordon Richard G.,
Cox Allan
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
geophysical journal of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.302
H-Index - 168
eISSN - 1365-246X
pISSN - 0016-8009
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-246x.1980.tb02642.x
Subject(s) - geology , ellipse , declination , geodesy , position (finance) , seamount , paleomagnetism , magnetic anomaly , geophysics , seismology , paleontology , geometry , mathematics , physics , astronomy , economics , finance
b The information available for determining palaeopoles for oceanic plates includes data of four types: (1) palaeomagnetic measurements of inclinations but not declinations from core samples; (2) palaeopoles determined from magnetic anomalies over seamounts; (3) phase shifts of linear magnetic anomalies; and (4) palaeoequators determined from geological analysis of sediment cores. A method is presented which combines these different kinds of data and their respective confidence limits to yield a best fit pole, a confidence ellipse, estimates of the data importances and goodness of fit parameters. Using this method we calculate the Campanian pole position for the Pacific plate which is shown by a chi‐squared test to be a reasonable fit to the data. We conclude that the method should be a useful tool for calculating pole paths for oceanic plates such as the Pacific and Indian plates.