This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Svensen, Henrik, Jerram, Dougal, Polozov, Alexander, Planke, Sverre, Neal, Clive, Augland, Lars, & Emeleus, Henry (2019) Thinking about LIPs: A brief history of ideas in Large igneous province research. Tectonophysics, 760, pp. 229-251. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/124156/ c Consult author(s) regarding copyright matters This work is covered by copyright. Unless the document is being made available under a Creative Commons Licence, you must assume that re-use is limited to personal use and that permission from the copyright owner must be obtained for all other uses. If the docu- ment is available under a Creative Commons License (or other specified license) then refer to the Licence for details of permitted re-use. It is a condition of access that users recog- nise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. 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Emeleus PII: S0040-1951(18)30419-0 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tecto.2018.12.008 Reference: TECTO 127999 To appear in: Tectonophysics Received date: 3 December 2017 Revised date: 28 November 2018 Accepted date: 9 December 2018 Please cite this article as: Henrik H. Svensen, Dougal A. Jerram, Alexander G. Polozov, Sverre Planke, Clive R. Neal, Lars E. Augland, Henry C. Emeleus , Thinking about LIPs: A brief history of ideas in Large igneous province research. Tecto (2018), https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.tecto.2018.12.008 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT THINKING ABOUT LIPS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF IDEAS IN LARGE IGNEOUS PROVINCE RESEARCH Henrik H. Svensen1, Dougal A. Jerram1,2,3, Alexander G. Polozov1,4, Sverre Planke1,5, Clive R. Neal6, Lars E. Augland1, and Henry C. Emeleus7 1. Centre for Earth Evolution and Dynamics (CEED), University of Oslo, Norway 2. DougalEARTH Ltd. Solihull, UK (www.dougalearth.com) 3. Visiting research fellow, Earth, Environmental and Biological Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia 4. Institute of Geology of Ore Deposits, Petrography, Mineralogy, and Geochemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Staromonetnyi side-str. 35, Moscow, 119017, Russia 5. Volcanic Basin Petroleum Research (VBPR), Oslo Science Park, Oslo, Norway 6. Dept. Civil & Env. Eng. & Earth Sciences, 156 Fitzpatrick Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA 7. Department of Earth Sciences, Durham University, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK. (Henry passed on 11 November 2017) ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Abstract Large igneous provinces (LIPs) are extraordinary igneous and tectonic events that have influenced the planet in profound ways, including the major turnovers in the history of life. The LIP concept, definitions, and terminology first nucleated in a 1990 workshop jointly 1 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT arranged by Joint Oceanographic Institutions and U.S. Science Support Program, subsequently presented in a series of seminal papers by Millard F. Coffin and Olav Eldholm in the early 1990's. They combined existing data and information from continental flood basalts with the emerging geophysical understanding of oceanic plateaus and rifted continental margins. The new terminology had major implications within the geosciences and beyond. However, when investigating how geoscientists described and interpreted these vast provinces prior to the 1990’s, we are left with a series of questions. Who first realized that LIPs represent extraordinary events in the history of the Earth, what terminology was used, and why were geologists interested in this type of events? Here we discuss some of the key developments in LIP research, including mapping projects, expeditions, international programs, correlations across continents, and the history of the terminology. We focus our discussion on four cases, the Karoo LIP, the Siberian Traps, the North Atlantic Igneous Province, and the Ontong Java Plateau, comprising key examples of LIPs with long histories of study and exploration. We conclude that the past 150 years of LIP-related research and endeavor was largely driven by a need to understand fundamental aspects of Earth evolution, including continental drift, plate tectonic reconstructions, the origin of basalt, mantle processes and plumes, and the role of volcanism in driving mass extinctions and climatic changes. 1. Introduction ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Large igneous provinces (LIPs) (Figure 1) were initially defined in the early 1990's as "massive crustal emplacement of predominantly mafic (Mg- and Fe-rich) extrusive and intrusive rock which originate via processes other than 'normal' seafloor spreading" (Coffin and Eldholm, 1992, 1994). There are currently no universally accepted definitions of a LIP, 2 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT but they are predominantly mafic volcanic provinces that were emplaced in a short time period (1-5 m.y.) covering at least 100,000 km2 with a volume of more than 100,000 km3 (cf. Ernst, 2014). LIPs are often characterized by having an early onset phase followed by a main phase or acme of eruption and then a waning phase, though some examples (such as the North Atlantic Igneous Province, Ontong Java Plateau, and Kerguelen Plateau) can have more than one pulse (Tejada et al., 1996; Neal et al., 1997; Saunders et al., 1997; Duncan, 2002; Jerram and Widdowson 2005). They are mainly divided in oceanic plateaus (e.g., Kerguelen Plateau, and Ontong Java Plateau), flood basalts along volcanic rifted margins (e.g., the North Atlantic Igneous Province), and intra-continental flood basalt (e.g., Karoo-Ferrar LIP, Siberian Traps), all composed of intrusive and extrusive domains with key volcanic facies and associations (e.g. Jerram, 2002). In addition to the mafic dominated examples listed above, silicic rich provinces are also included in a revised LIP definition (e.g. Bryan et al., 2002). Other noted examples include large dyke and sill swarms, plutonic provinces, and kimberlites and carbonatites (see Bryan and Ernst, 2008; Ernst, 2014). Coffin and Eldholm’s (1992) original catalogue of LIPs was restricted to the past 250 m.y. and contained 11 continental flood basalt provinces, 23 oceanic plateaus, and 33 passive margins. Another 26 provinces were also included, comprising; ocean basin flood basalt, seamount chains, and submarine ridges. In 2014, the full catalogue of LIPs had increased to 211 (Ernst, 2014). The youngest LIP is the Columbia River LIP that erupted about 17 m.y. with a size of 240ACCEPTED,000 km2. The LIP record hasMANUSCRIPT also been extended to include Archean greenstone belts (e.g. Ernst and Buchan, 1997), and the oldest LIP in the catalogue is Dominion at 3 Ga (Ernst, 2014). The preservation of LIPs is strongly dependent on their age and subsequent geological history, and some of the older LIPs are only identified based on dike swarms, with liitle or no extrusive components preserved, and their inferred volumes are 3 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT thus speculative. Note that LIPs with volumes in 1-10 M km3 range are suggested to be classified as Major LIPs, and those with >10 Mkm3 as Giant LIPs (cf. Ernst, 2014). The age and duration of LIPs is also particularly challenging, as it is commonly difficult to obtain reliable ages in altered mafic rocks and, in many cases, only a few shallow borehole samples are available from the offshore sections of the provinces. One such example is the North Atlantic Igneous Province (NAIP), where significant basins containing intruded sills occur on the conjugate margins of Norwary/UK and Greenland (e.g. Svensen et al., 2010; Reynolds et al., 2016). Here, only a few of the sills have been sampled and dated from the ca. 75,000 km2 of intruded sedimentary basins offshore Norway (Svensen et al., 2010), limited examples have been intersected in the UK margin, and none in the offshore Greenland margin (Reynolds et al., 2016), resulting in a vast area of un-sampled and a relatively un-known component of the NAIP. This is scenario is common place in LIPs associated with rifted margins as well as the oceanic LIPs. The total duration of LIP magmatism may be substantial (>5 m.y.) when the total time span of associated small-volume igneous complexes is included (e.g., Jourdan et al., 2005; Jerram and Widdowson 2005). In general, early dating projects concluded that LIP volcanism could last for tens of millions of years (e.g., Ficth and Miller, 1984), but recent improvements in geochronology, such as zircon U-Pb dating, has shown that in many cases the main phase/pulse of LIP activity can be very abrupt and may be shorter than 0.5 m.y. (e.g., Svensen et al., 2012; Blackburn et al., 2013; Burgess and Bowring, 2015).