Age progressive volcanism in the Comores Archipelago, western Indian Ocean and implications for Somali plate tectonics

The Comores Islands together with the Tertiary volcanic province of northern Madagascar form a sublinear trend of alkali olivine basalt shield volcanoes across the northern entrance of the Mozambique Channel. Potassium-argon dating of shield-building lavas confirms an eastward increase in age of volcanism along the chain, consistent with a hotspot origin for the lineament. The velocity of the Somali plate over the mantle magma source is 50 mm/yr.

We use the distribution of ages along the Comores-Madagascar chain in conjunction with existing age data for the Reunion-Mascarene Plateau hotspot track to model the absolute motion of the Somali plate for the last 10 m.y. We calculate the relative motion across the East African Rift by subtracting the Somali plate absolute motion from African plate absolute motion during this period. The model predicts 320 km of total separation across the East African Rift during the past 10 m.y. which is greater than has been estimated from surface geological evidence

The geometry of older portions of the Comores and Reunion trends indicates that there was no significant relative motion between the African and Somali plates prior to about 10 m.y. ago.