News
10.03.2021Publication of the paper "Magnetostratigraphic Dating"
PhD. Bet Beamud, head of the Paleomagnetism Unit of the CCiTUB and Geosciences Barcelona (CSIC) has published the article "Magnetostratigraphic Dating" corresponding to one chapter of the "Encyclopedia of Geology".
This chapter, conducted jointly with Dr. Miguel Garcés of the Department of Earth and Ocean Dynamics of the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Geomodels Research Institute, University of Barcelona, explains the basics of the 'Magneto-stratigraphic dating', a technique in which both of them are specialists with a long experience and recognition, due to their dating studies carried out in the Pyrebees and Ebro Basin.
It also explains the fundamentals of this technique, how the discovery of the geomagnetic field reversals allowed the construction of the time scale of geomagnetic polarity, how magnetization of sediments is and some methodological aspects such as sampling of materials. and analysis in the laboratory. The examples of demagnetization and magnetostratigraphic dating shown in the chapter correspond to some of the work done in the Paleomagnetism Unit in recent years.
Magnetostratigraphy is a powerful dating tool applicable to almost all sedimentary materials and one of the features offered by the Paleomagnetism Unit of the CCiTUB and Geosciences Barcelona.
The summary of the article is:Magnetostratigraphy is the subdiscipline of stratigraphy that aims to divide the stratigraphic record into intervals of homogeneous magnetic polarity, named magnetozones. Each magnetozone corresponds to a period of Earth history, named geomagnetic chron (or chron), limited by two geomagnetic field reversals. Since field reversals are globally isochronous, magnetostratigraphic divisions are true chronostratigraphic (time) units. A correlation with the Geomagnetic Polarity Time Scale (GPTS) is achieved if the sequence of magnetozones finds a pattern match with a sequence of reversals in the GPTS. In achieving this, absolute ages of geomagnetic reversals can be assigned to every magnetozone boundary in a local stratigraphic section. Magnetostratigraphy has been used to correlate fragmentary records from disparate regions, in order to build, in association with biostratigraphy and geochronology, a comprehensive Geological Time Scale.