American Geophysical Union, Geophysical Research Letters, 20(42), p. 8367-8372, 2015
DOI: 10.1002/2015gl065394
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The nature of the Jurassic Quiet Zone (JQZ), a region of low amplitude oceanic magnetic anomalies, has been a long-standing debate with implications for the history and behavior of the Earth's geomagnetic field and plate tectonics. To understand the origin of the JQZ, we studied high-resolution sea-surface magnetic anomalies from the Hawaiian magnetic lineations and correlated them with the Japanese magnetic lineations. The comparison shows: (i) excellent correlation of anomaly shapes from M29 to M42; (ii) remarkable similarity of anomaly amplitude envelope, which decreases back in time from M19 to M38, with a minimum at M41, then increases back in time from M42; and (iii) refined locations of pre-M25 lineations in the Hawaiian lineation set. Based on these correlations, our study presents evidence of a regional and possible globally coherent pre-M29 magnetic anomalies in the JQZ and a robust extension of Hawaiian isochrons back to M42 in the Pacific crust.