Regional chronostratigraphy in the eastern Lesser Antilles quaternary fore-arc and accretionary wedge sediments: Relative paleointensity, oxygen isotopes and reversals

Abstract : Paleomagnetism is a powerful tool for establishing an almost continuous chronostratigraphy for an entire region. When combined with other dating methods, absolute or relative, it can be used to develop a regional reference chronostratigraphic framework. During the summer of 2016, several piston cores were collected along the Atlantic side of the Lesser Antilles onboard the R/V Pourquoi pas? as part of the CASEIS Expedition. Core CAS16-24 PC was devoted to chronostratigraphic analysis and allowed development of a quasi-continuous Quaternary record. In this study, after identifying and removing rapidly deposited layers such as turbidites and tephra layers, we reconstructed the relative paleointensity (RPI) variations by normalizing the natural remanent magnetization with the laboratory induced anhysteretic remanent magnetization. An age model was developed by comparing our RPI record with the PISO-1500 stack and paleomagnetic axial dipole moment model for the past 2 Myr (PADM-2M) and the planktic oxygen isotopic record (δ¹⁸O) for core CAS16-24 PC with the LR04 benthic stack. By combining the δ¹⁸O stratigraphy with paleomagnetic analyses, we established an age model covering the Brunhes/Matuyama boundary and Jaramillo Subchron back to ∼1.15 Ma with a mean sedimentation rate of 1.7 cm/kyr. This age model complements the paleomagnetic data from IODP campaigns and volcanic records, and offers almost complete inclination, declination and RPI records as a local reference.