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The Radiocarbon Ages of Different Organic Components in the Mires of Eastern Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2018

Len Martin ,
James Goff ,
Geraldine Jacobsen  and
Scott Mooney Open the ORCID record for Scott Mooney [Opens in a new window]
Len Martin
Affiliation:
School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW2052, Australia
James Goff
Affiliation:
School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW2052, Australia
Geraldine Jacobsen
Affiliation:
Institute for Environmental Research, The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Locked Bag 2001, Kirrawee DC, NSW2232, Australia
Scott Mooney*
Affiliation:
School of Biological Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW2052, Australia
*
*Corresponding author. Email: s.mooney@unsw.edu.au.
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Abstract

Radiocarbon (14C) dating is widely used to determine the age of organic material in palaeoenvironmental research. Here we compare 14C dates (n=17) resulting from macro-charcoal (>250 μm), short-lived plant macrofossils and pollen-rich residues isolated from two mire environments in eastern Australia. In most samples we found that short-lived plant macrofossils were the youngest organic component, the charcoal samples most often fell into the middle and the pollen-rich residues consistently returned older dates than the other samples. Although pollen-rich residues have been widely used for 14C dating in Australasia we suggest some caution in their use, perhaps because in our fire-prone environments these samples often also contain fine charcoal and other oxidative resistant organic matter that is older than the surrounding sediment matrix. The macro-charcoal samples also often returned older calibrated ages compared to short-lived plant macrofossils from the same depth, although this difference was relatively small (<245 years). Our results demonstrate that 14C dating of short-lived plant macrofossils are likely to yield more accurate chronologies and we advocate their routine use in palaeoenvironmental research when they are available.

Keywords

charcoalpeatplant macrofossilspollenradiocarbon dating
Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 61 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 173 - 184
Copyright
© 2018 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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