We investigated a 1‐km‐thick sequence of lava flows that erupted over the Afar plume axis in order to better understand the emplacement history of the ∼30 Ma Ethiopia‐Yemen Traps. Geochemical analyses reveal high‐titanium concentrations (TiO2 3.9 ± 0.5 wt%) in basalts close to picritic compositions. Indistinguishable 40Ar/39Ar ages throughout the section define a weighted‐mean of 31.18 ± 0.28 Ma (95% confidence). This date, together with solely normal polarity magnetization directions in 68 geomagnetically independent horizons, constrain the eruption to within chron C12n, with a maximum duration of a few hundreds of kyr for the entire 1‐km‐thick section. The rate of geomagnetic secular variation used as a chronometer refines the duration to only a few tens of kyr, leading to a local extrusion rate of 4–13 km3/yr for the Afar plume head, which greatly exceeds the average rate of 0.3–1.2 km3/yr for the entire Ethiopia‐Yemen Traps.

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The Tuoyun volcanics from the Tian Shan range (Central Asia) give an opportunity to investigate the variability of the Earth's magnetic field during the Cretaceous and Early Paleogene. In the paper we focus on Maastrichtian-Paleocene basalts and report new paleomagnetic results from 70 lava flows (respectively 45 directional groups) sampled near Tuoyun village (75.33°E; 40.18°N) from three distinct sections. Combined with previous results, our new data set yields a virtual geomagnetic pole at φ S ¼ 180.2°E, ϑ S ¼ 49.5°N with an angular standard deviation S ¼ 20:8 ∘ j 23:1 ∘ 18:8 ∘ (for N ¼ 93 directional groups). The mean inclination I s ¼ 36.2°is indicative of an emplacement of the Tuoyun volcanics at a paleolatitude around 20°N, consistent with the high dispersion k ¼ 14.6 of the directions. Such an inclination value is 10-15°l ower than the predictions from the apparent polar wander paths for stable Europe and East Asia. This observation can be partly explained by crustal shortening within the East Asian plate during the India-Asia convergence, but also needs to invoke a local field anomaly in Central Asia as previously proposed. Our absolute paleointensity experiments conducted on two lava flows and two baked sedimentary layers yield a mean virtual dipole moment of 58.9 ± 6.9 ZA•m 2 , consistent with the values at 60-70 Ma in the global paleointensity database. Compared to relative paleointensity results during the Cretaceous Normal Superchron and during the Plio-Pleistocene, the relative variability in intensity-supposed to be a proxy for the geodynamo's activity-estimated here at 31 ± 5% (N ¼ 15) from pseudo-Thellier experiments possibly corroborates a correlation between geomagnetic reversal frequency and paleosecular variation rate during the past 120 Myr. An open question is whether the changes in the frequency of reversals correlate with the gradual temporal changes of the magnetic field during stable periods, referred to as paleosecular variation (PSV). An increase of PSV rate with reversal frequency has often been proposed (e.g., Biggin et al., 2008). Identifying such a correlation however depends on our ability to accurately quantify PSV through geological time. This is

SUMMARY Changes in palaeosecular variation, dipole moment and polarity reversal frequency are salient features of the Earth’s magnetic field over the geological past, yet how these changes are linked by the geodynamo remains controversial. To further understand this issue, we provide new absolute (API) and relative (RPI) palaeointensities from the ∼1-km-thick basaltic sequence of Waja (North Ethiopia) emplaced around 31 Ma, yielding an instantaneous virtual dipole moment of 57 ± 9 ZAm2 (1σ, N = 18) and a relative variability in intensity εF = 0.39 ± 0.07 (1σ, N = 19). Our analysis of the API database with strict selection criteria (inclusion of Thellier-style determinations with pTRM checks only, at least five determinations per cooling unit, and within-unit relative standard error lower than 10 per cent) fails to identify any robust correlation between changes in dipole moment and reversal frequency over the past 155 Myr. More convincingly, the available RPI results are consistent with an increase of the palaeosecular-variation proxy εF with reversal rate, as predicted by numerical dynamo simulations. We also find that the API-based estimate εF = 0.40 ± 0.03 (1σ, N = 104), computed from the filtered version of the World Palaeointensity Database for the 0.77–31 Ma interval, is consistent with the scaling rule, suggesting that the API record has been sufficiently sampled over the past 31 Ma. We thus speculate that the absence of negative correlation between changes in dipole moment and reversal frequency in the API database over the past 155 Myr may be the result of insufficient sampling prior to 31 Ma rather than the signature of an intrinsic geomagnetic feature.

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