Paleomagnetism, rock-magnetism and geochemical aspects of early Cretaceous basalts of the Paraná Magmatic Province, Misiones, Argentina

The basalts of the Posadas Formation were extruded during the huge continental volcanism that affected the Paraná Basin in the Lower Cretaceous. We have carried out a paleomagnetic and rock-magnetic study on samples collected along a basalt outcrop section in Misiones, Argentina and determined that rocks classified as tholeiitic basalts and andesi-basalts are characterized by a low to intermediate content of Ti. Paleomagnetic and rock-magnetic studies suggest that the main magnetic mineral is low-Ti titanomagnetite of superparamagnetic (SP) to single-domain (SD) sizes, and very low amounts of multi-domain (MD) particles. The stable magnetic remanence enabled us to define characteristic remanent magnetizations (ChRMs) with a maximum angular deviation (MAD)