Magnetization age from paleomagnetism of the Copper Harbor red beds, Northern Michigan, USA, and its Keweenawan geologic consequences

Abstract

The Copper Harbor Formation on Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Peninsula records the transition from volcanic to sedimentary infilling of North America’s 1.1 Ga Keweenawan rift. Radiometric dating shows that the formation’s primary mafic sediments and interbedded “Lake Shore” flows were deposited between ∼1092 and ∼1082 Ma. Our regional paleomagnetic results for the Copper Harbor’s red beds yield a dominantly prefolding normal-polarity secondary chemical characteristic remanent magnetization in hematite at 18 of 21 sites with a mean direction of declination = 274.9°, inclination = +10.9° (k = 69.5, α95= 4.2°), and a paleopole at 7.4°N, 181.7°E (A95= 3.3°). Using paleopoles from Keweenawan volcanic rocks with U–Pb zircon age dates, an apparent polar wander path is constructed from 1106 ± 2 to 1087 ± 2 Ma. Extrapolation of this path dates oxidation of the Copper Harbor’s primary gray beds to red beds at 1060 ± 5 Ma. The path implies an apparent polar wander rate of ∼18 cm per year from ∼1108 to 1096 Ma and of 6.8 cm per year from 1096 to 1087 Ma, along with a consistent clockwise rotation of 0.30 ± 0.05°per million years for the Laurentian Shield from ∼1108 to ∼1160 Ma. Further, most Keweenawan volcanic rocks around the Lake Superior region carry an endemic ∼1060 Ma normal-polarity hematite remanence overprint, acquired during the initial stages of Grenvillian tectonic uplift, that has caused asymmetry in a unit’s normal and reverse paleopoles. Also, the Copper Harbor paleopole dates emplacement of the White Pine stratiform sedimentary copper mineralization more precisely at 1060 ± 5 Ma.