• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.663-674
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• 2000

A total of 165 independently oriented core samples were collected from 19 Cretaceous Yuchon Group sites in Kosong area, the southernmost part of the Miryang subbasin of the Kyongsang Basin in southern Korea. Stepwise AF and thermal cleaning revealed antipodal ChRM from 95 samples from 14 sites. Mean ChRM direction is d=26.0$^{\circ}$, i=49.4$^{\circ}$ (${\alpha}_{95}$=8.2$^{\circ}$, k=24.5, n= 14) before bedding correction and d=28.1$^{\circ}$, i=54.2$^{\circ}$ (${\alpha}_{95}$=4.8$^{\circ}$, k=70.6, n= 14) after bedding correction. A 2.88-fold increase of the precession parameter k by bedding correction indicates pre-folding age of the ChRM with 99% confidence level. Palaeomagnetic pole position calculated from the mean ChRM is 67.0$^{\circ}$N, 210.6$^{\circ}$E (dp=4.7$^{\circ}$, dm=6.7$^{\circ}$), which is significantly different neither from the poles of other part of the Kyongsang Basin nor those of Eurasia including SCB and NCB. This suggests stable relative position of the study area with regard to other parts of the Kyongsang Basin as well as to Eurasia continent since Cretaceous. Three ploarity reversals in the Kosong Formation in addition to the coexistence of normal and reversed polarities in the overlying Andesites and Welded Tuff suggest, in reference to the worldwide geomagnetic polarity time scale, an Albian to Maastrichtian (polarity chron 32r-31r) age of the Yuchon Group of the study area. An alleged hypothesis of stratigraphical correspondence between the Kosong Formation in the study area and the Tadaepo Formation in Pusan area is, however, not tenable: Not only because the latter shows a short reverse polarity only in its lowest part of the sequence but also because the Andesites overlying it is wholly normally magnetized, in contrast to the frequent reverals in the case of both the Kosong Formation and Andesites above it.