Interhemispheric comparison of deglacial sea-surface temperature patterns in Atlantic eastern boundary currents

Widespread clockwise rotations in Mesozoic and Lower Tertiary rocks of northern Chile have been interpreted as the sum of two rotational events separated in time: an early rotation related to local deformation plus a late rotation related to wholesale rotation of northern Chile linked to Late Cenozoic oroclinal bending in the Central Andes. In this paper we report new paleomagnetic data from Cretaceous, upper Oligocene and Miocene sedimentary rocks in the Precordillera of northern Chile. The results suggest that all these rocks acquired their remanence at or close to the time of deposition. The lack of rotation in undeformed lower Miocene strata clearly indicates that clockwise rotations found in underlying, faulted and folded Cretaceous rocks were completed before the Late Cenozoic. Results from nearby localities in deformed upper Oligocene strata would argue for little (~5°) rotation since the late Oligocene. Data from widely separated Miocene localities covering an area of about 5000 km2 in the Calama basin strongly suggest that northern Chile did not undergo significant wholesale rotation during the Late Cenozoic. This, together with previous paleomagnetic evidence against Neogene rigid-body-like rotation of the southern Peruvian forearc, suggests that the curved shape of the Central Andean forearc was not significantly enhanced during the Late Cenozoic. By inference, all of the rotation in most Mesozoic and Lower Tertiary rocks of northern Chile was accomplished in the Cretaceous and/or Early Cenozoic, when the locus of deformation in the Central Andes was localized in the present forearc region.