Post-rift flood-basalt-like volcanism on the Newfoundland Basin nonvolcanic margin: The U event mapped with spectral decomposition

Abstract

Diabase sills emplaced at less than .5 km depth (presently ~ 7 km) are imaged throughout the Newfoundland Basin as an extraordinarily high amplitude package of seismic reflections historically referred to as the U event. The sills are extensive, covering roughly 20,000 km 2, and represent a post-rift voluminous magmatic episode along an otherwise nonvolcanic rifted margin. Spectral decomposition is used to estimate a total magmatic volume at roughly 1000–2000 km 3. On an individual basis the major sills are comparable to flows in flood basalt volcanic environments. A proposed mechanism for generating these large volumes of magma which are also very limited in time to perhaps only two major intrusive episodes (2 sills) is the approach of the Canary and Madeira hot spots. Suppressed volcanism while the hot spots traveled under full thickness continental lithosphere of Newfoundland resulted in a local accumulation of magma which was suddenly released when the hot spots approached thinned lithosphere at the eastern edge of the Grand Banks. The emplacement of the sills ‘anticipated’ the arrival of the hot spots geographically.