Abstract
Recent developments in the use of nuclear accelerators as high-energy mass spectrometers1,2 has renewed interest in the study of cosmogenic 10Be (half life 1.5 Myr) as a geophysical time tracer. The accelerator techniques enable us to measure 10Be with a sensitivity of 107 atoms or less. The potential age dating span with 10Be is extended back to at least 15 Myr BP, providing that the 10Be production and deposition rates remain constant or nearly constant over that time period. A knowledge of the long-term constancy in the 10Be deposition rate is thus very important. We report here the first detailed measurements of 10Be and 9Be in two ferromanganese oxide crusts from the sea floor of the equatorial Atlantic (sample no. K-9-21) and the North Pacific (SCHW-1D), each representing >10 Myr of accumulation history. We have found in these crusts that the deposition of 10Be and 10Be/9Be during the past 7–9 Myr has been constant. Averaged over time intervals of ∼1 Myr, the variation is within ±6%. Before that time, both crusts show similar significant deviations. The 7–9 Myr demarcation may be related to the reported late Miocene global abyssal circulation change in the ocean3.
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Ku, T., Kusakabe, M., Nelson, D. et al. Constancy of oceanic deposition of 10Be as recorded in manganese crusts. Nature 299, 240–242 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/299240a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/299240a0
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