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Mesozoic sequence of Fuerteventura (Canary Islands): Witness of Early Jurassic sea-floor spreading in the central Atlantic

¹ Institut de Géologie et Paléontologie, Université de Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
² CH-1985 La Forclaz, Switzerland

The Fuerteventura Jurassic sedimentary succession consists of oceanic and clastic deposits, the latter derived from the southwestern Moroccan continental margin. Normal mid-oceanic-ridge basalt (N-MORB) flows and breccias are found at the base of the sequence and witness sea-floor spreading events in the central Atlantic. These basalts were extruded in a postrift environment (post–late Pliensbachian). We propose a Toarcian age for the Atlantic oceanic floor in this region, on the basis of the presence higher up in the sequence of the Bositra buchi filament microfacies (Aalenian–Bajocian) and of clastic deposits reflecting tectono-eustatic events (e.g., late Toarcian to mid-Callovian erosion of the rift shoulder). The S-1 sea-floor oceanic magnetic anomaly west of Fuerteventura is therefore at least Toarcian in age.

The remaining sequence records Atlantic-Tethyan basinal facies (e.g., Callovian–Oxfordian red clays, Aptian–Albian black shales) alternating with clastic deposits (e.g., Kimmeridgian–Berriasian periplatform calciturbidites and a Lower Cretaceous deep-sea fan system).

The Fuerteventura N-MORB outcrops represent the only Early Jurassic oceanic basement described so far in the central Atlantic. They are covered by a 1600 m, nearly continuous sedimentary sequence which extends to Upper Cretaceous facies.

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