Application of Bingham statistics to a paleopole data set: Towards a better definition of APWP trends?

Bingham statistical analyses were applied to paleomagnetic data from 50 published studies from North America, of Carboniferous through Early Jurassic age, in an attempt to test whether the azimuths of the long axes of the Bingham ellipses lie tangent to the apparent polar wander path. The underlying assumption is that paleomagnetic directions will form a Fisherian (circular) distribution if no apparent polar wander has taken place during magnetization acquisition. However, the distribution should appear elongated (elliptical) if magnetization acquisition occurred over a significant amount of time involving apparent polar wander. The long axes in direction space yield corresponding azimuths in paleopole space, which can be compared to the North American APWP. We find that, generally, these azimuths are indeed sub-parallel to the APWP, validating the methods and the hypothesis. Plotting a pole as an azimuthal cord, representing the long axis of the ellipse, will provide additional robustness or definition to an APWP based upon temporally sparse paleomagnetic studies.