Abstract
THE suggestion that microanalysis of nitrogen, fluorine and uranium in fossil bones should be used for age determination1–4 assumes that the concentration of these elements varies uniformly in time. Vonach5 has plotted calibration curves for the N and F content of fossil bones from the past 108 yr. The nitrogen content, N, can be approximated by
logN = −0.135 logt + 0.681
where N is weight per cent and t is age in years. The chemical changes that occur in buried bones depend on the composition of the surrounding minerals and the environmental conditions6. The concentration of a given element in bone is also influenced by biochemical differences between samples. Consequently, large fluctuations in N can be expected around the gross trend described by Vonach. We report here a fluctuation of the N content of bones that seems to correlate with climatic change.
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BUCZKO, C., VAS, L. Effect of climate on chemical composition of fossil bones. Nature 269, 792–793 (1977). https://doi.org/10.1038/269792a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/269792a0
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