Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

The sudden spike in magma productivity (red line) is contemporaneous with the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum around 56.1 million years ago (Ma). Estimated melt production rates are for the Blosseville Kyst-Faeroes Islands lava successions in comparison to values calculated for the oldest oceanic crust offshore based on crustal thickness measurements (Holbrook et al., 2001), using the time scale of (Ogg and Smith, 2004). Figure 5 from Storey et al. (2007).

Samples are from the Lopra-1 drill hole on Suduroy in the Faeroe Islands, tholeiitic flows from the Nansen Fjord formation (NF) near the base of the ∼7 km thick East Greenland Blosseville Kyst lava succession, the Milne Land formation (MLF), one of four regionally extensive basalt formations exposed on the Blosseville coast of East Greenland, the Rømer Fjord formation (RF) approximately half way up the post-hiatus Plateau Lavas in East Greenland, and the Skraenterne formation (SF), the uppermost of the four main lava formations of the Plateau Lavas.