Paleomagnetic, rock-magnetic and paleointensity data from three early Paleozoic geological units: plutons of the Araçuaí orogen, Brazil; Gabbros of Aberdeenshire, Scotland; and a Silurian volcanic succession of the southern Britain

The dataset contains results from three early Paleozoic geological units: the approximately 500 Ma Santa Angélica and Venda Nova plutons of the Araçuaí orogen, Brazil; the approximately 470 Ma Younger Gabbros of Aberdeenshire, Scotland; and the approximately 430 Ma Silurian volcanic succession of the East Mendips Inlier, southern Britain. The deposited files include specimen- and site-level paleointensity results, paleomagnetic directional data, rock-magnetic measurements, methodological and selection-criteria information, and the processed data used to construct the long-term virtual dipole moment and geomagnetic polarity-reversal-frequency synthesis. Upload-ready files for analysis using Paleomagnetism.org and Paleointensity.org are also included, together with file-level metadata. These data provide new estimates of geomagnetic field strength from approximately 500-430 Ma and help fill a major gap in the Phanerozoic paleointensity record. They were used to investigate the relationship between long-term geomagnetic dipole moment and polarity reversal frequency. The data relate to three study areas: the Santa Araçuaí and Venda Nova plutons in the Araçuaí orogen, EspÃrito Santo, southeastern Brazil; the Younger Gabbros of Aberdeenshire, northeast Scotland; and the Early Wenlock volcanic succession of the East Mendips Inlier at Stokes Quarry, Somerset, southern Britain. Data support the paper "Geomagnetic dipole moment and polarity reversal frequency covary on a ~200-million-year timescale". The paper identifies the three datasets and their respective ages and locations, and states that the deposit contains upload-ready analytical files, metadata and the data used to construct the long-term synthesis."

Date (Creation): 2026-07-10

Citation identifier: http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13608745

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
University of Liverpool	Dr Simon Lloyd	not available	Originator
University of Liverpool	Dr Rebecca Hopkins	not available	Originator
University of Liverpool	Joseph Brabin	not available	Originator
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	not available	Distributor
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	not available	Point of contact

Maintenance and update frequency: notApplicable

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Geology

BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences

Cambrian
Geomagnetic reversals
Ordovician
Palaeozoic
Earth core
Magnetism
Palaeomagnetism
Phanerozoic
Earth mantle
Silurian
Geomagnetism

dataCentre

Keywords

NERC_DDC

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: licenceOGL

Other constraints: Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]"

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.

Other constraints: Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]"

Language: English

Topic category

Geoscientific information

Begin date: 2024-02-01

End date: 2026-07-01

Reference System Information

No information provided.

Distribution format

Name	Version
Comma-Separated Values (CSV) file (.csv)
Text file (TXT)
Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx)

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	not available	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related	https://doi.org/10.5285/25ec9da7-0da9-4e4c-8aab-f8c4646936e4	Citation Information - Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download	https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/services/ngdc/accessions/index.html#item192730	Data

Hierarchy level: Non geographic dataset

Other: non geographic dataset

Conformance result

Title: INSPIRE Implementing rules laying down technical arrangements for the interoperability and harmonisation of Geology

Date (Publication): 2011

Explanation: See the referenced specification

Pass: No

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Explanation: See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:323:0011:0102:EN:PDF

Pass: No

Statement: Oriented drill cores and hand samples were analysed using rock-magnetic, microscopy and paleointensity methods. Magnetic mineralogy was characterised using hysteresis, thermomagnetic measurements, scanning electron microscopy and EDX. Absolute paleointensity estimates were obtained using thermal Thellier, microwave, Shaw, pseudo-Thellier, Triaxe and Wilson methods, as appropriate. Results were screened using directional and method-specific reliability criteria, and site means were calculated from accepted specimen-level results. Cooling-rate experiments were also undertaken for the intrusive rocks.