Giant paleo-seafloor craters and mass wasting associated with magma-induced uplift of the upper crust

Omosanya, K. O., Duffaut, K., Alves, T. M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2765-3760, Eruteya, O. E., Johansen, S. E. and Waldmann, N. 2022. Giant paleo-seafloor craters and mass wasting associated with magma-induced uplift of the upper crust. Scientific Reports 12 (1) , 4392. 10.1038/s41598-022-08205-0

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Abstract

Giant seafloor craters are known along many a continental margin with recurrent mass-wasting deposits. However, the impact of breakup-related magmatism on the evolution of such craters is barely understood. Using high-quality geophysical datasets, this work examines the genetic relationship among the location of magmatic sills, forced folds and the formation of giant paleo-seafloor craters underneath an ancient mass-transport complex in the Møre and Vøring basins, offshore Norway. The data reveal that forced folding of near-seafloor strata occurred because of the intrusion of several interconnected magmatic sills. Estimates of 1-dimensional uplift based on well data show that uplift occurred due to the intrusion of magma in Upper Cretaceous to Lower Eocene strata. Our findings also prove that subsurface fluid plumbing associated with the magmatic sills was prolonged in time and led to the development of several vertical fluid flow conduits, some of which triggered mass wasting in Neogene to Recent times. The repeated vertical expulsion of subsurface fluids weakened the strata on the continental slope, thereby promoting mass wasting, the selective cannibalization of the paleo-seafloor, and the formation of elongated craters at the basal shear zone of the mass-transport complex. Significantly, the model presented here proves a close link between subsurface magmatic plumbing systems and mass wasting on continental margins.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Earth and Environmental Sciences
Additional Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
Publisher:	Nature Research
ISSN:	2045-2322
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	29 March 2022
Date of Acceptance:	2 March 2022
Last Modified:	06 May 2023 08:49
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/148956

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