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Science 23 April 1999:
Vol. 284. no. 5414, pp. 616 - 618
DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5414.616
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Reports

Extensive 200-Million-Year-Old Continental Flood Basalts of the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province

Andrea Marzoli, 12* Paul R. Renne, 13dagger Enzo M. Piccirillo, 2 Marcia Ernesto, 4 Giuliano Bellieni, 5 Angelo De Min 2

The Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) is defined by tholeiitic basalts that crop out in once-contiguous parts of North America, Europe, Africa, and South America and is associated with the breakup of Pangea. 40Ar/39Ar and paleomagnetic data indicate that CAMP magmatism extended over an area of 2.5 million square kilometers in north and central Brazil, and the total aerial extent of the magmatism exceeded 7 million square kilometers in a few million years, with peak activity at 200 million years ago. The magmatism coincided closely in time with a major mass extinction at the Triassic-Jurassic boundary.

1 Berkeley Geochronology Center, 2455 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94709, USA.
2 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Universitá di Trieste, via Weiss 8, 34127 Trieste, Italy.
3 Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
4 Instituto Astronómico e Geofísico, Universidade de São Paulo, R. do Matão 1226, 015508-900 São Paulo, Brazil.
5 Dipartimento di Mineralogia e Petrologia, Universitá di Padova, Corso Garibaldi 37, 35100 Padova, Italy.
*   Present address: Department de Minéralogie, Université de Genève, 13 rue des Maraichers, 1211 Geneva 4, Switzerland.

dagger    To whom correspondence should be addresssed. E-mail: prenne{at}bgc.org

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