Course Description
Quantitative dating methods on timescales from 10 a to 1 Ma for the Master’s program in Geology. Students from other courses of study are welcome to join as well. This course will give you an understanding of radioactive decay and how it can be used to measure time. We will discuss sample preparation, analytical methods, and the most commonly used Quaternary geochronologic techniques and their applications to geological, geographical, anthropological, and archaeological research. At the end of this course, you will be able to develop your own research question and find the best geochronologic method to solve the problem. Lectures will be provided in the form of videos.
Recommended Textbooks
These textbooks are helpful resources, but are not mandatory for this course. I will try to organize online access to these textbooks through the LMU library.
Schaeffer and Zähringer (1966): Potassium Argon Dating (free PDF download)
resources
Natural abundances of isotopes
Chart of the Nuclides - Online version of the chart of the nuclides with detailed information for each nuclide.
Geochronology (GChron) - Open access journal published by EGU
Prime lab quartz separation procedures for 10Be and 26Al dating
Table of polyatomic isobaric interferences
The bleeding edge of cosmogenic-nuclide geochemistry. - Greg Balco's blog about all things cosmogenic nuclides, which has some very helpful articles.