Spectral analyses of several published magnetic anomaly profiles from Cande & Kent (1992a) were undertaken prior to analysing, in the same way, raw magnetic anomaly data from similar parts of the South Atlantic. It was found that similar and distinct medium and short wavelengths were present in both the published and raw data. When these are converted into the time domain using the average rate of spreading for each profile, these periodicities appear similar, possibly identical, to those expected from the long-term eccentricity orbital parameters ( Fischer, DeBoer & Premoli Silva 1990). While such correlations are not necessarily causative, they suggest that magnetohydrodynamical processes near the core-mantle boundary may be affected by gravitational changes due to planetary orbital perturbations.