Absolute paleointensity determinations by using of conventional double-heating and multispecimen approaches on a Pliocene lava flow sequence from the Lesser Caucasus

One of the flows is located near a possible discontinuity in the sequence and yields a rather low Thellier absolute intensity (16.3 ± 5.2) suggesting a transitional regime and the onset of the Matuyama-Olduvai polarity transition, which does not appear on the directional record. Multispecimen paleointensities from the same flow, however, yield higher, close to present day values which makes untenable the hypothesis of occurrence of transitional field. Thus the whole sequence was emplaced in a short time between the Olduvai chron and 1.73 ± 0.03 Ma, as suggested by available radiometric and paleomagnetic data (Caccavari et al., 2014).