ABSTRACT
A block of pitchstone in the northern Black Hills, South Dakota, is Paleocene in age, according to potassium-argon dating of biotite and fission-track dating of zircon in the sample. These data invalidate published suggestions that the age is much younger. The pitchstone is not extrusive in its present position but instead is in a volcanic pipe with other fragments that came downward from as much as 1100 meters above the modern surface.
ABSTRACT
Kodiak Seamount and Giacomini Guyot have been dated at 22.6 +/- 1.1 and 19.9 +/- 1.0 [2sigma (standard deviation)] x 10(6) years, respectively. Concordant whole-rock and plagioclase potassium-argon dates and fission-track apatite ages demonstrate that significant quantities of excess radiogenic (40)Ar are not present in the dated samples. These seamounts are the northwesternmost edifices of the Pratt-Welker chain, which cuts obliquely across magnetic anomaly patterns in an older northeastern Pacific sea floor. The older of the two dated seamounts is in the Aleutian Trench, apparently about to be subducted. If one assumes that seamounts are generated by plate motion over a fixed hot spot in the mantle, a Pacific-plate motion of 6.6 centimeters per year during early Miocene time may be calculated.
ABSTRACT
A new technique has been developed whereby fission tracks can be etched in zircon with a solution of sodiuim hydroxide at 220 degrees C. Etching time varied between 15 minutes and 5 houtrs. Colored zircon required less etching time than the colorless varieties.
