Magmatism and hotspot trails during and after continental break-up in the South Atlantic

Abstract

The track of South Atlantic hotspots on oceanic crust is well known. However, the possible hotspot trails of Tristan-Gough (TG) and St. Helena (SH) plume heads on continental crust have not been clearly defined. The occurrence of a large igneous province in Northeast Brazil, previously named EQUAMP, is reviewed, enlarged in time and space, and renamed as the Borborema Large Igneous Province, or BOR-LIP (135-104 Ma). There is strong evidence of an active dual plume system during the South America breakup: The BOR-LIP, in Northeast Brazil, and the Paraná-Etendeka Magmatic Province – PEMP-LIP (135-131 Ma), in SE Brazil and SW Africa. As widely accepted, the post-breakup trajectories of the SH, TG, and Sierra Leone (SL) hotspot trails (on oceanic crust) illustrate how the South American and African plates drifted away from each other. Regarding the pre-breakup trajectories, coherent and robust evidence of the migration path of the TG and SH plume heads on continental crust within the Brazilian side of the margin is presented here. They are remarkable consistent with the northwestward movement of Africa and South America, during Early Cretaceous, when referred to a deeper lithospheric reference frame, not necessarily rooted in the core-mantle boundary. The migration paths on oceanic and continental crust of the SH and TG plumes, are consistent with an intense interplay between deep-sourced mantle plumes and the relative rotation between the South American and African plates, as illustrated by the non-linear TG hotspot trail within the extremely stretched continental crust of the Santos Basin. The expressive magmatism observed in the Santos Basin, stretched during the 130-114 Ma interval, is interpreted as a direct consequence of the change in the magma budget due to the arrival of the TG plume head beneath the basin, when decompression-driven may have released melting of plume material. Large volumes of CO2, sourced by the mantle and found in petroleum accumulations within the Santos Basin, may be also genetically related to the TG plume accelerating the exhumation processes in hyper-extended terrains.