Magma flow directions of shallow dykes from the East Greenland volcanic margin inferred from magnetic fabric studies

The role played by plume-generated crustal magmatic complexes in the segmentation of volcanic margins is highlighted by a preliminary study of magma flow directions in shallow intrusives from the East Greenland volcanic margin. We investigate the magmatic texture using anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility for eight dykes of tholeitic affinity belonging to a dyke swarm associated with the Tertiary opening of the North Atlantic Ocean. The thickness of the sampled dykes ranges from 3 to 37 m. The dykes are of doleritic texture and contain up to 12% of opaque minerals and 35% of plagioclase laths. Dykes showing a magnetic foliation plane within the dyke plane, i.e. a magnetic fabric usually attributed to magmatic processes, represent 40% of the samples from the studied swarm. These dykes have a low degree of anisotropy and their ellipsoid of magnetic susceptibility is strongly oblate. Inverse magnetic fabrics, where the maximum principal susceptibility axis lies near the pole to the dyke account for 60% of the data. We interpret these inverse fabrics either as alteration minerals with highly prolate ellipsoids of magnetic susceptibility or primary titanomagnetites with oblate ellipsoid of low anisotropy. The flow direction is inferred for normal fabric dykes using the mirror imbrication of magnetic lineation. Analysis of thin sections shows a good agreement between magnetic fabric directions and phenocryst preferred orientations. The inferred flow directions are predominantly horizontal, throwing a new light on volcanic margin development. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.