Abstract
A pre-heating method that improves the background and precision of 14C dating significantly was applied for fossil coral dating with high resolution in our lab in Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (GIGCAS). The reaction tube is heated under 300°C in a vacuum line before it is used for graphitization. The method can reduce the contamination absorbed in TiH2, Zn and Fe power placed in the graphitization tube. With the pre-heating and average drilling method, bi-weekly resolution 14C dating in a fossil coral is carried out to investigate the “AD 775 14C spike event”. Different from the tree ring 14C archives with the 14C spike of ∼15‰ (Δ14C), the 14C spike in the coral shows an abrupt peak of 45‰ and two smaller spikes of Δ14C>20‰ in half a year in AD 776. And then, the 14C content in coral decreases gradually in AD 777. The peak time of the 14C spike event likely occurs in the summer of AD 776 according to the δ18O variation in coral. High-resolution dating of 14C in coral provides not only a more detail process of the event than that from tree rings, but also the first report of the event from sea ecosystem. Both of them suggest an extraterrestrial origin of the event cause.
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