Recent advances in rock magnetism and their applications to paleomagnetism

Abstract

The purpose of the present article is to review the highlights in rock magnetism research as seen from papers published (and those presently in press) during the period 1971–1974. Since this review is not meant to be comprehensive, I apologize in advance for possible omissions. Reviews dealing with the magnetic properties of lunar, meteoritic, and oceanic materials will be found elsewhere in this issue. Efforts have been made to make the bibliography at the end of this article as comprehensive as possible. Papers in rock magnetism are defined not only to include bona fide rock magnetism articles dealing with the various physicochemical aspects of the origin and stability of the natural remanent magnetization (NRM) of rocks and minerals but also to include those particular articles in paleomagnetism which do not treat (magnetic) rocks as ‘black boxes’ and to point out one interesting aspect or another of the magnetic minerals and their relevance to the measured NRM properties. In fact, it is my hope that the tenor of the present article is such that it will place rock magnetism firmly in this context, that of its applications to paleomagnetic and hence geological and geophysical problems. Also, at the outset I should refer here to four recent review articles [Dunlop, 1973c; Hargraves and Banerjee, 1973; Harrison, 1974; Fuller, 1974] and a new book [Stacey and Banerjee, 1974] in the field of rock magnetism.