Planetary surface dating from crater size–frequency distribution measurements: Partial resurfacing events and statistical age uncertainty

Abstract

We describe the procedure to fit a cumulative production function polynomial to a partial crater size–frequency distribution. The technique is of particular use in deriving ages for surfaces which have undergone partial resurfacing events: namely, erosional or depositional events which have affected a limited diameter range of the crater population. We demonstrate its use in obtaining times for both the surface formation and the resurfacing event. We give a practical outline of the method for making age measurements from crater counts and how to identify resurfacing effects in the results. We discuss the conversion of production function polynomials between common presentations, and the statistical uncertainty of the determined ages with respect to the non-linear chronology function, and a minor refinement of data binning.