Paleomagnetism of Upper Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous volcanic and sedimentary rocks from the western Tarim Basin and implications for inclination shallowing and absolute dating of the M-0 (ISEA?) chron

Stepwise demagnetization isolates a stable magnetic component in 13 sites of basalt flows and baked sediments dated at 113.3±1.6 Ma from the Tuoyun section, western Xinjiang Province, China. Except for one flow from the base of the ∼300 m thick section, the rest have exclusively reversed polarity. The sequence correlates with chron M-0 in some geomagnetic polarity time scales, which potentially places the section just before the start of the Cretaceous Long Normal polarity superchron. Five of 11 sites of Early Cretaceous red beds that underlie the basalts possess coherent directions that pass both fold and reversals tests. Six sites of Upper Jurassic red beds have a magnetic component that was likely acquired after folding in the Tertiary. The mean paleolatitude of the Lower Cretaceous red beds is 11° lower than that of the Lower Cretaceous basalts suggesting the red beds underestimate the true field inclination. We further test this result by calculating the paleolatitudes to a common point of the available Early Cretaceous to Present paleomagnetic poles from red beds and volcanic rocks from central Asian localities north of the Tibetan Plateau. We find that paleolatitudes of volcanic rocks roughly equal the paleolatitudes calculated from the reference Eurasian apparent polar wander path (APWP) and that paleolatitudes of red beds are generally 10–20° lower than the paleolatitudes of volcanic rocks and those predicted from the reference curve. Our study suggests that central Asian red beds poorly record the Earth’s field inclination, which leads to lower than expected paleolatitudes. Good agreement in paleolatitudes from volcanic rocks and the Eurasian APWP argues against proposed canted and non-dipole field models.