Comparative K–Ar and Ar/Ar dating of Ethiopian and Yemenite Oligocene volcanism: implications for timing and duration of the Ethiopian traps

Coulié, Emmanuel; Quidelleur, Xavier; Gillot, Pierre‐Yves; Courtillot, Vincent; Lefevre, Jean Claude; Chiesa, Sergio

doi:10.1016/s0012-821x(02)01089-0

Cited by 141 publications

(106 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Lesser basaltic volcanism continued for another 1-2 My, and felsic volcanic rocks first appeared at ϳ30 Ma and quickly became dominant by 28 Ma. In another study of the same and similar northern Ethiopia plateau sections Coulié et al (2003) found that the oldest basalts were 30.6 ± 0.4 Ma (K-Ar whole-rock) and confirmed the sequence of events and timing identified by Hofmann et al (1997) and Rochette et al (1998).…”

Section: Afar and The Ethiopian Plateausupporting

confidence: 63%

Early magmatism in the greater Red Sea rift: timing and significance

Bosworth¹,

Stöckli

2016

Can. J. Earth Sci.

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Throughout the greater Red Sea rift system the initial late Cenozoic syn-rift strata and extensional faulting are closely associated with alkali basaltic volcanism. Older stratigraphic units are either pre-rift or deposited during pre-rupture mechanical weakening of the lithosphere. The East African superplume appeared in northeast Africa ϳ46 Ma but was not accompanied by any significant extensional faulting. Continental rifting began in the eastern and central Gulf of Aden at ϳ31-30 Ma coeval with the onset of continental flood volcanism in northern Ethiopia, Eritrea, and western Yemen. Volcanism appeared soon after at Derudeb in southern Sudan and at Harrats Hadan and As Sirat in Saudi Arabia. From ϳ26.5 to 25 Ma a new phase of volcanism began with the intrusion of a dike field reaching southeast of Afar into the Ogaden. At 24-23 Ma dikes were emplaced nearly simultaneously north of Afar and reached over 2000 km into northern Egypt. The dike event linked Afar to the smaller Cairo mini-plume and corresponds to initiation of lithospheric extension and rupture in the central and northern Red Sea and Gulf of Suez. By ϳ21 Ma the dike intrusions along the entire length of the Red Sea were completed. Each episodic enlargement of the greater Red Sea rift system was triggered and facilitated by breakthrough of mantle-derived plumes. However, the absence of any volumetrically significant rift-related volcanism during the main phase of Miocene central and northern Red Sea -Gulf of Suez rifting supports the interpretation that plate-boundary forces likely drove overall separation of Arabia from Africa.Résumé : Dans l'ensemble du grand système du rift de la mer Rouge, les strates initiales syn-rifting et l'extension par failles d'âge cénozoïque tardif sont étroitement associées à un volcanisme basaltique alcalin. Les unités stratigraphiques plus anciennes précèdent la formation du rift ou ont été déposées durant l'affaiblissement mécanique de la lithosphère qui a précédé la rupture. Le superpanache est-africain est apparu dans le nord-est de l'Afrique à ϳ46 Ma, mais n'était pas accompagné d'une importante déformation par failles. Le rifting continental a commencé dans l'est et le centre du golfe d'Aden à ϳ31-30 Ma, en même temps que le début du volcanisme continental de plateau dans le nord de l'Éthiopie, en Érythrée et dans l'ouest du Yémen. Le volcanisme est apparu peu après à Derudeb, dans le sud du Soudan, et aux Harrats Hadan et As Sirat, en Arabie saoudite. À partir de ϳ26,5-25 Ma, une nouvelle phase de volcanisme a débuté avec l'intrusion d'un essaim de dykes allant du sud-est d'Afar jusque dans l'Ogaden. À 24-23 Ma, des dykes ont été mis en place presque simultanément au nord d'Afar et s'étalant sur plus de 2000 km jusque dans le nord de l'Égypte. L'intrusion de dykes a relié Afar au mini-panache plus petit du Caire et correspond au début de la distension et de la rupture lithosphériques dans le centre et le nord de la mer Rouge et le golfe de Suez. À ϳ21 Ma, l'intrusion de dykes sur toute la longueur de ...

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Section: Afar and The Ethiopian Plateausupporting

confidence: 63%

Early magmatism in the greater Red Sea rift: timing and significance

Bosworth¹,

Stöckli

2016

Can. J. Earth Sci.

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“…Using a paleoclimatic model (e.g., [54]), Touchard evaluated the extent, volume, flux and dynamic wind transport of the tephra, and most importantly was able to tie in the events to the biostratigraphic time scale. His work and that of Coulié et al [29] confirm that volcanism lasted from chron C11r to C11n-1r, with an upper bound of 800 kyr on total duration of the main basaltic and rhyolitic phases, and of about 100 kyr for the terminal bimodal (basaltic and rhyolitic) phase, which amounts to 800 m, i.e. 40% of the total plateau thickness.…”

Section: The Ethiopian and Yemen Trapsmentioning

confidence: 66%

“…Though Ukstins et al [181] imply that volcanism was continuous between 29 and 26 Ma, this is not borne out on a regional scale. Coulié et al [29] analyzed basaltic and silicic samples, from both the Yemen and Ethiopian traps, using both the Cassignol-Gillot K/Ar method and the 40 Ar/ 39 Ar method (see also [28]). Interlaboratory biases and discrepancies in the ages of standards were thus largely eliminated and the authors concluded that ages by both methods were concordant, and that onset of volcanism was coeval over the whole province at 30.6 ± 0.4 Ma and 30.2 ± 0.4 Ma, respectively, in Ethiopia and Yemen.…”

Section: The Ethiopian and Yemen Trapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The resolution of the biostratigraphic correlation, brevity of reversed subchron C11n-1r and small uncertainty on age determinations have led Touchard et al [180] to propose that it could be used as a new tie-point of the GPTS at 30.1 Ma. On the other hand, the welldefined age of the C11n-2n to C11n-1r reversal, which is bracketed by four K-feldspar age spectra, has led Coulié et al [29] to propose an age of 29.75 ± 0.10 Ma for this N to R tie-point. When uncertainties on age standards are taken into account, both ages are actually defined with an uncertainty no less than 0.3 Ma and are therefore not yet distinguishable.…”

Section: The Ethiopian and Yemen Trapsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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On the ages of flood basalt events

Courtillot

Renne

2003

Comptes Rendus. Géoscience

736

400

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We review available data constraining the extent, volume, age and duration of all major Phanerozoic continental flood basalts (CFB or traps) and oceanic plateaus (OP), together forming the group of large igneous provinces (LIP), going from the smallest Columbia flood basalts at ∼16 Ma to the as yet ill-known remnants of a possible trap at ∼360 Ma in eastern Siberia. The 16 traps (CFB and OP) reviewed form a rather unimodal distribution with an initial modal volume of the order of 2.5 Mkm 3 . Most provinces agree with a rather simple first order model in which volcanism may have lasted of the order of 10 Ma, often resulting in continental break-up, but where most of the volume was erupted in about 1 Ma or sometimes less. This makes CFBs/OPs (LIPs) major geodynamic events, with fluxes exceeding the total output of present day hot spots and even possibly exceeding over short times the entire crustal production of mid-ocean ridges. The proposed correlation between trap ages and the ages of several geological events, including mass extinctions and oceanic anoxia, is found to have improved steadily as more data have become available, to the point that the list of trap ages may coincide with many major divisions in the geological time scale. The four largest mass extinctions in the last 260 Ma coincide to the best resolution available with four traps, making a causal connection between the two through some form of catastrophic climatic perturbations the most likely hypothesis. The time sequence of LIPs appears to have been random and there is no robust evidence for long time trends in the corresponding crustal production rate over the last 260 Ma.  2003 Académie des sciences/Éditions scientifiques et médicales Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved. RésuméNous passons en revue l'ensemble des données qui permettent de contraindre l'étendue, le volume, l'âge et la durée de toutes les grandes provinces magmatiques basaltiques (en anglais LIP) d'âge Phanérozoïque, qu'il s'agisse des trapps ou plateaux basaltiques continentaux (en anglais CFB) ou des plateaux océaniques (OP), allant de la plus récente et plus petite (le plateau de Columbia âgé de ∼16 Ma) à l'une des plus anciennes, encore mal connue, située dans l'Est de la Sibérie et sans doute âgée de ∼360 Ma. Les 16 provinces passées en revue forment une distribution assez unimodale, avec des volumes initiaux de lave de l'ordre de 2,5 Mkm 3 . La plupart des provinces sont compatibles, au premier ordre, avec un modèle simple selon lequel le volcanisme a pu durer une dizaine de millions d'années et a en général conduit à une déchirure des continents et à l'ouverture d'un nouveau bassin océanique, mais où l'essentiel du volume des laves a été émis en environ 1 million d'années, parfois moins. Ceci fait des trapps (des LIP en général) des événements géodynamiques majeurs, avec des flux de matière ayant dépassé la production totale actuelle des points chauds et même, peut-être, pendant de brefs intervalles, la totalité de la production de croûte V.E. Courtillot, P.R. Renn...

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“…This eruption is associated with the first appearance of the Afar mantle plume head (e.g., Hofmann et al, 1997;Mohr and Zanettin, 1988;Pik et al, 1998Pik et al, , 1999Ayalew et al, 2002;Coulié et al, 2003) or a larger plumelet within a broad upwelling zone (Meshesha and Shinjo, 2008) connected to the African Superplume beneath southern Africa (e.g., Janney et al, 2002;Furman, 2007). This CFB is tholeiitic to alkaline in composition (Kieffer et al, 2004;Pik et al, 1998Pik et al, , 1999Meshesha and Shinjo, 2007), and it has been spatially classified based on its contrasting geochemical signatures into low-Ti basalts (LT-type) and high-Ti basalts (HT1 and HT2-types) (Pik et al, 1998Beccaluva et al, 2009).…”

Section: Geological Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geochemical and Sr–Nd–Pb isotopic compositions of lithospheric mantle: Spinel lherzolites in alkaline basalts from the northwestern Ethiopian plateau

Meshesha¹,

Shinjo

Orihashi

2014

Journal of Mineralogical and Petrological Sciences

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The geochemical characteristics of mantle xenoliths (spinel lherzolites) in Quaternary alkaline basalts from the northwestern Ethiopian plateau provide new insight into the conditions of melting associated with the Afar plume. The major element compositions of the spinel lherzolites are in the range of those of the primitive mantle. The high modal content of the clinopyroxene (14-23%) indicate that the mantle xenoliths are fertile spinel lherzolites that have experienced insignificant partial melting. However, enrichment in highly incompatible elements (LREE, Ba, Pb, Th, and U) and the absence of any typical metasomatic minerals indicate that the spinel lherzolites underwent an event of later cryptic metasomatic enrichment induced by plume-related, hydrous fluid-rich silicate melts. The

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Comparative K–Ar and Ar/Ar dating of Ethiopian and Yemenite Oligocene volcanism: implications for timing and duration of the Ethiopian traps

Cited by 141 publications

References 50 publications

Early magmatism in the greater Red Sea rift: timing and significance

Early magmatism in the greater Red Sea rift: timing and significance

On the ages of flood basalt events

Geochemical and Sr–Nd–Pb isotopic compositions of lithospheric mantle: Spinel lherzolites in alkaline basalts from the northwestern Ethiopian plateau

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