The palaeomagnetism of glauconitic sediments

The palaeoenvironmental significance of glaucony has long been appreciated, but accurate palaeomagnetic dating of events recorded by glauconitic horizons requires an understanding of how glauconitic sediments acquire a remanent magnetization. Pure glauconitic minerals are paramagnetic, but glauconite grains are large and slow-forming (over periods that can exceed 100 kyr), with complex and variable morphologies. It is, thus, possible that small magnetic grains within glaucony particles may carry a significant fraction of the remanence in weakly magnetized sediments. Any remanence carried by glauconitic grains may therefore represent the geomagnetic field at a time significantly later than the time of deposition, or a time-averaged signal over some or all of the formation period. We investigated this problem using weakly magnetic Palaeocene glauconitic siltstones from southern New Zealand. We disaggregated the rock and separated it magnetically into glauconitic and non-glauconitic fractions. Results from stepwise isothermal remanent magnetization (IRM) acquisition, alternating-field demagnetization, temperature dependence of magnetic susceptibility, and stepwise thermal demagnetization of a triaxial IRM were used to demonstrate that the remanent magnetization is carried by single-domain or pseudo-single-domain magnetite in the non-glauconitic sediment fraction, and that the glauconite grains themselves make no contribution to the remanent magnetization. However, accurate measurement of the primary remanence is complicated by a strong viscous overprint and mineral alteration during thermal demagnetization studies. Identification of magnetite as the remanence carrier in sediments within a reducing diagenetic environment gives confidence that the remanence has a depositional origin. Glauconite does not carry a remanence; therefore, its effect is to dilute and weaken the overall magnetization. Furthermore, the use of rock magnetic parameters may be problematic when glauconite concentrations are (as in the studied sediments) orders of magnitude greater than remanence carrier concentrations, because in such cases the glauconite susceptibility can dominate that of the remanence carriers.