Abstract Magnetic fabrics are commonly studied to understand the magma flow in volcanic and hypovolcanic settings. In this work we present a magnetic fabric study in the Sierra de Javalambre (SE Iberian Chain), a geological unit that includes a swarm of Mesozoic volcanic intrusive and extrusive bodies associated with a hotspot and extensional deformation in Eastern Iberia during the Mesozoic. The sill sampled in this work is constituted by alkaline dolerites (ocean island basalts, OIB composition) and is a part of more than a hundred outcrops emplaced in Upper Triassic (Keuper facies) diapiric units and Jurassic limestones. The presence of Ti-poor titanomagnetite in the studied hypovolcanic rocks is inferred from temperature-dependent magnetic susceptibility curves and also from analyses of the three components isothermal remanent magnetization (IRM), since the decay of the magnetic susceptibility and the soft axis (0.12 mT) of the IRM occurs at 580°C. The magnetic susceptibility shows high values, in average 17554 × 10 –6 . The anisotropy of the magnetic susceptibility shows some dispersion of the maximum and intermediate axes on the bedding plane, whereas the minimum axes are clustered almost perpendicular to the bedding plane for the 158 standard analyzed samples. The magnetic lineation (clustering of the maximum axes of the anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility) is bimodal with WNW-ESE and NNE-SSW directions in the in-phase magnetic susceptibility, and can be interpreted as the flow direction of the magma controlled by the NW–SE and N-S extensional fault systems during the basinal (Jurassic) stage.
Oliva-Urcia et al. (Sun,) studied this question.