Marine magnetics: new approaches to solve plate tectonic problems in complex or narrow basins

The success of marine magnetics to date the seafloor and reconstruct the evolution of basins in not to demonstrate anymore.  However, some basins still remain poorly understood, either because of limited data coverage, tectonic complexity, or narrow width that do not allow full sequences of recognizable magnetic anomalies to be clearly identified.  We propose new approaches that add to the classical identification of geomagnetic polarity reversal including the interpretation of tiny wiggles, i.e., low amplitude short wavelength anomalies that reflect paleointensity variations, and long wavelength anomalies that, in the absence of magnetized extrusive basalt, represent the contribution of the deeper oceanic crust. Examples of sea-surface and near-seafloor data where these approaches have helped to solve dating and reconstructing oceanic basin history will be presented.