A fresh look at Gulf of Mexico tectonics: Testing rotations and breakup mechanisms from the perspective of seismically constrained potential-fields modeling and plate kinematics

Abstract

Interpretation of recent, high-quality seismic data in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) has led to competing hypotheses regarding the basin’s rift to drift transition. Some studies suggest a fault-controlled mechanism that ultimately results in mantle exhumation prior to seafloor spreading. Others suggest voluminous magmatic intrusion accommodates the terminal extension phase and results in the extrusion of volcanic seaward dipping reflectors (SDRs). Whereas it has been generally accepted that the plate motions between the rift and drift phases of the GOM are nearly perpendicular to each other, it has not been greatly discussed if the breakup mechanism plays a role in accommodating the transition in plate motion. We have developed a plate kinematic and crustal architecture hypothesis to address the transition from rift to drift in the GOM. We support the proposition of a fault-controlled breakup mechanism, in which slip on a detachment between the crust and mantle may have exhumed the mantle. However, we stress that this mechanism is not exclusive of synrift magmatism, though it does imply that SDRs observed in the GOM are not in this case indicative of a volcanic massif separating attenuated continental and normal oceanic crust. We support our hypothesis through a geometrically realistic 2D potential field model, which includes a magnetic seafloor spreading model constrained by recent published seismic data and analog rock properties. The 2D model suggests that magnetic anomalies near the continent-ocean transition may be related to removal of the lower continental crust during a phase of hyperextension prior to breakup, ending in mantle exhumation. The kinematics of breakup, derived from recent satellite gravity data and constrained by our spreading model and the global plate circuit, suggests that this phase of hyperextension accommodated the change in plate motion direction and a diachronous breakup across the GOM.