RATIONALE OF GEOMAGNETIC REVERSALS VERSUS REMANENCE RECORDING PROCESSES IN ROCKS - A CRITICAL-REVIEW

Various evidences for a standing non-dipole field, stable with respect to reversals and thus leading to non-antidopal normal and reverse stable directions, suggest to reconsider the effect in the paleofield-remanence relationship of filtering due to lock-in time of natural remanence. Time averaging of non-antipodal stable directions leads to records that mimic the prediction of the low-order zonal harmonic model. A number of published sedimentary and intrusive records may be interpreted as such a by-product of the field behavior outside the transition itself, thus accounting for their discrepancies with volcanic records. © 1990.