Several large gaps in the otherwise remarkably detailed transition path of the Steens Mountain reversal raises the question whether they represent significant pauses in eruption rate or impulsive field change. The discovery in flows at two of the gaps of streaked directions of high-temperature remanence that depart most in their interior parts from the stable direction of the underlying lava fitted better with the latter explanation, but the calculated rate of field movement implied as these thin flows cooled and became magnetized was very high. Because rock magnetic studies failed to prove a less astonishing alternative to the rapid-field-change hypothesis, coeval sections of flows recording the same reversal were sampled to test it further. Flows at three of these sections that lie stratigraphically at the level of the second directional gap in the record at Steens Mountain revealed a large, entirely new part of the transition path. Clearly, then, this second gap represents a significant eruptive hiatus, but the directions at the level of the first gap from the new sections still allow the rapid-field-change hypothesis. Here we present rock magnetic results from new samples collected at the original location of the first gap at Steens Mountain. These results, especially those from rapid continuous thermal demagnetization experiments performed in the Triaxe magnetometer in Paris, show that the streaked directions have a rock magnetic explanation and do not imply extraordinarily rapid field change.

• Session: GP43A: Observational Constraints and Modeling Insights of the Paleogeomagnetic Field II Posters