Using 40Ar/39Ar ages of intercalated silicic tuffs to date flood basalts: Precise ages for Steens Basalt Member of the Columbia River Basalt Group

Abstract

To establish causality between flood basalt eruptions and extinction events and global environmental effects recorded by isotopic excursions in marine sediments, highly accurate and precise ages for the flood basalts are required. But flood basalts are intrinsically difficult to date. We illustrate how 40Ar/39Ar feldspar ages for silicic tuffs intercalated with and overlying sections of Steens Basalt, the earliest lavas of the Middle Miocene Columbia River Basalt Group in the northwestern United States, provide high-precision ages that, for the first time, make it possible to resolve age differences with stratigraphic position within a section of these flood lavas. The stratigraphically lowest rhyolitic tuff, a fall deposit, yielded an age of 16.592±±0.028 Ma (FCs = 28.02 Ma), and the uppermost, the alkali rhyolite ignimbrite Tuff of Oregon Canyon, is 16.468±±0.014 Ma. The argon and stratigraphic data indicate that Steens Basalt eruptions occurred from ∼16.64 to 16.43 Ma in the southern end of its distribution. We estimate that the Steens Mountain geomagnetic reversal occurred at 16.496±±0.028 Ma (±0.18 Ma total error). Our estimates of the timing for initiation of volcanism and volumetric eruptive rates do not seem to support volcanic forcing by the initial stages of Columbia River Basalt Group eruptions as an explanation for the abrupt warming and carbonate dissolution at the beginning of the Miocene Climatic Optimum.