A Simple Method to Separate Pollen for AMS Radiocarbon Dating and Its Application to Lacustrine and Marine Sediments
Issue Date
1999-01-01Keywords
Lake MoranMazama Ash
Sierra Nevada
Santa Barbara Basin
lake sediments
lacustrine environment
California
marine sediments
instruments
Holocene
microfossils
miospores
palynomorphs
pollen
accelerator mass spectroscopy
mass spectroscopy
spectroscopy
United States
sample preparation
sediments
Cenozoic
Quaternary
methods
geochronology
C 14
carbon
dates
isotopes
radioactive isotopes
absolute age
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Mensing, S. A., & Southon, J. R. (1999). A simple method to separate pollen for AMS radiocarbon dating and its application to lacustrine and marine sediments. Radiocarbon, 41(1), 1-8.Journal
RadiocarbonAdditional Links
http://radiocarbon.webhost.uits.arizona.edu/Abstract
We present a simple method for manually separating pollen concentrates for radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating using a mouth pipetting system. The required equipment is readily available from scientific equipment supply houses at minimal cost. Pollen samples from lake sediments required about 4 h of hand picking, whereas samples from marine sediments required about 8 h labor. Pollen dates from marine sediments were much older than expected. We are attempting to resolve whether this is due to contamination of the pollen or the presence of significant quantities of old reworked pollen. Pollen dates from lake sediments associated with Mazama Ash were consistent with other published ages; however, replicate dates on pollen samples from above the ash were consistently older than the surrounding sediment. Our results suggest that caution must be used when interpreting pollen dates if the potential for sediment reworking is present.Type
Articletext
Language
enISSN
0033-8222ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1017/S0033822200019287