Lower Permian to Miocene apparent polar wander path for Iberia and its bearings on kinematic evolution.

Abstract

A review of the reliable paleomagnetic poles for the Iberian plate is given in the range Permian to Miocene. After rejection of data belonging to displaced of deformed areas, or representing remagnetizations, 11 poles are selected. Using this data base, an Apparent Polar Wander Path (APW) is constructed. Two methods are used. The first one is a refined sliding window method. Ihe second one is the small circie fitting recently developped in APW modelling. This method is appropiate for the lower Perrnian-lower Jurassic track only. Finaily, the consistency of the APW with known kinematic models for Iberia is tested. There are, roughly speaking, two kinds of models describing the evolution of Iberia relative to Europe: single rotation models and left-lateral shift models. As a result, both models lead to statistically equivalent fits between the European and iberian APW’s, for the lower Permian-lower Jurassic track. Thus, it is clearly shown that the current lack of palcomagnetic data prevents us from giving close constraints to the kinernatic evolution of Iberia.