Mid-Miocene cosmogenic upper limit for 10Be/21Ne burial age

doi:10.1016/j.quageo.2018.08.004

Quaternary Geochronology

Volume 48, October 2018, Pages 72-79

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quageo.2018.08.004 Get rights and content

Abstract

Cosmogenic nuclide burial dating provides an alternative method for sediment dating, and the combination of radionuclide ¹⁰Be with noble gas isotope ²¹Ne would theoretically extend the burial dating range up to around 15 Ma ago, which endows ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne pair with huge potential in middle-Miocene sediment dating. Especially in the magnetostratigraphic studies of the Cenozoic sedimentary strata, the ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne pair could be expected to provide absolute age marker when the well-dated volcanic ash layer or bedded mammalian fossils are absent. However, the validity and accuracy of the ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne burial dating when used close to its limiting middle Miocene ages has not been assessed in case study. Here, we show our dating results of the sedimentary stratum samples, which deposited at the same bedding of the Vertebrate fossils of Platybelodon tongxinensis that offer an independent age constraint between 12 and 15 Ma. The ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne analyses yielded a mean burial age of 13.25 ± 0.33 Ma, which agrees well with the paleontological proxy, and the MSWD value of 0.66 indicates the good agreement of the apparent dispersion of six aliquots data with their individual measurement errors. In view of the extended applicable dating range of ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne pair, it is promising in providing absolute age marker or valuable chronological information for a variety of fields in Earth science and beyond.

Introduction

Sediments record crucial information about the erosional and sedimentary processes (e.g., Balco et al., 2013; Granger et al., 2015; Ivy-Ochs and Briner, 2014; Matmon et al., 2012), and are regarded as the key to understanding issues of how landscape evolves as well as how geomorphic processes interact with tectonic activities and/or climatic changes (e.g., Bishop, 2010; Burbank et al., 1996). However, suitable chronological methods for sediment dating on the timescales of millions of years are actually scarce. Magnetostratigraphy can afford unique chronological sequences for the continental sediments relying on an age marker of well-dated volcanic ash layer or bedded mammalian fossils, but this independent age constraint is not always available in every sedimentary stratum (Balco and Shuster, 2009).

Cosmogenic nuclide burial dating provides an alternative method for sediment dating (Granger and Muzikar, 2001). A pair of cosmogenic nuclides produced in the same minerals but with different half-lives, or one stable isotope and one radionuclide, in principle allows the determination of burial time since the onset of sediment deposited on the basis of the time-dependent relative concentration of this pair of nuclides (Lal, 1991; Lal and Arnold, 1985). Radioactive ¹⁰Be/²⁶Al is the most widely used pair in burial dating because both ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al are produced in quartz whose chemical composition is simple and in which the nuclide production ratio has been well established. Shorter-lived nuclide controls the upper limit of a nuclide pair when it decays to a level that cannot be measured accurately, therefore, the ¹⁰Be/²⁶Al nuclide pair is sensitive to the decay time on the scale of few million years dependent on the half-life of ²⁶Al, which endows it with great capability to accurately date Plio-Pleistocene sediments.

The combination of radionuclide ¹⁰Be with noble gas isotope ²¹Ne would theoretically extend the applicable range of cosmogenic burial dating up to middle Miocene of around 15 Ma ago (Balco and Shuster, 2009), and additionally the stable ²¹Ne recorded the pre-burial exposure history of sediments more directly, which is supposed to be a promising proxy for the temporal variability of the paleo-erosion rates at source basin. However, only a few study cases have employed stable ²¹Ne in sediment burial dating (e.g., Balco and Shuster, 2009; Davis et al., 2011; Sartégou et al., 2018), and the burial ages dated by using ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne pair mainly distribute in Plio-Pleistocene period.

In this work, we select an ideal sampling site, where the basin-filling process has been investigated thoroughly and the definite age sequence of the sedimentary strata has been established. Especially, an independent age constraint from Vertebrate fossils that are mixed with the sediments we collected has further restricted the depositional time of surrounding sediments within the age range of 12–15 Ma. We aim to date the sediments here by using cosmogenic ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne burial dating method, in order to show the improved dating range yielded by the combination of stable nuclide ²¹Ne with radioactive nuclides, and on the other hand, to assess the accuracy of ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne burial dating when used close to its limiting middle Miocene ages.

Section snippets

Geological setting

The study area is located in the southern Ningxia Basin, NW China, where is at the tectonic junction zone of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, Ordos block and Alax block. The southern Ningxia Basin is bound by the Niushou Shan-Luo Shan (LSF) and Tianjing Shan (TJSF) faults, and thus it is separated from the Yinchuan Graben in the northeast direction and the Sikouzi Basin in the southwest (Fig. 1 A and B). Cenozoic sediments are widely deposited in this area due to the uplift and denudation of

Sample collection

Six samples were collected at the position of 20 m inwards from the cave entrance, where are basically shielded from the cosmic-ray irradiation at present (Fig. 2B). Each aliquot is a bulk sediment collected from an area with the same length of about 20 cm for each dimension and is mainly composed of quartz-bearing sandstone, with seldom gravel clasts. Six aliquots were collected within a lateral offset of 3 m. Coarse sands were sieved out for analysis, and in order to limit the effect of

Results

Considering the long depositional time would result extremely low ¹⁰Be concentrations in samples that were close to the detection limit of AMS measurement, we have used twice the amount for routine samples to keep the amount of ¹⁰Be maintaining at the order of 10⁵ atoms, in order to minimize measurement errors for ¹⁰Be. The measurement results of ¹⁰Be and ²¹Ne analyses for six aliquots are summarized in Table 1, Table 2.

As expected, the ¹⁰Be/⁹Be isotopic ratio is only several times higher than

Discussion

Under some situations, the validity and accuracy of the burial dating depends strongly on the geological models used to describe the histories sediments had experienced. As a result, we interpret the influence of the geological assumptions involved in this case on the burial dating results.

Conclusions

We have selected an ideal sampling site with an independent age constraint of 12–15 Ma for a preliminary proof of the Mid-Miocene upper limit of ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne burial dating method. The resultant ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne burial age of 13.25 ± 0.33 Ma agrees well with the paleontological proxy, and the MSWD value of 0.66 indicates the good agreement of the apparent dispersion of six aliquots data with their individual measurement errors. The uncertainties of the burial ages mainly derive from errors of nuclide

Declarations of interest

None.

Acknowledgements

This work was jointly supported by Grants-in-Aid from the basic scientific research fund, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration (Grant No. IGCEA1504), the State Key Laboratory of Earthquake Dynamics (Grant No. LED2017A05), and the basic scientific research fund, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration (Grant No. IGCEA1417). The authors express their sincere thanks to Prof. Zhaoqun Zhang in Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy

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¹: Present address: State Key Laboratory of Earthquake Dynamics, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Yard No.1jia, Hua Yan Li, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100029, China.

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Mid-Miocene cosmogenic upper limit for 10Be/21Ne burial age

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Geological setting

Sample collection

Results

Discussion

Conclusions

Declarations of interest

Acknowledgements

Earth Planet Sci. Lett.

Quat. Geochronol.

Earth Planet Sci. Lett.

Earth Planet Sci. Lett.

Quat. Sci. Rev.

Earth Planet Sci. Lett.

Earth Planet Sci. Lett.

Geochem. Cosmochim. Acta

Earth Planet Sci. Lett.

Earth Planet Sci. Lett.

Int. J. Mass Spectrom.

Quat. Geochronol.

Earth Planet Sci. Lett.

Nucl. Instrum. Meth. Phys. Res. B

Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol.

Quat. Geochronol.

Quat. Geochronol.

Earth Planet Sci. Lett.

Mid-Miocene cosmogenic upper limit for ¹⁰Be/²¹Ne burial age