Proton Induced X-ray Emission Study on the Content of Whale Tooth

Abstract

The use of Ion beam technique for assaying small amounts of trace elements and major elements distribution has grown rapidly in recent years. Major and minor elemental composition of teeth has been extensively studied. In this work, elements content in teeth of whale were analyzed by the Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE). This work is an attempt to investigate the history of mammal's different annual rings layer of whale tooth. High levels of Trace elements such as Zn and Sr were detected in the teeth. By analysis of elemental composition and evaluation of trace elements in different layer, the route of the whale movement and the status of pollution of environment were obtained. The result indicated that the technique is suitable to obtain minor and trace constituents of the teeth. The obtained results are discussed in detail and these results are compared withavailable data. The methods which are widely used in the analysis of trace elements were reported elsewhere (12). In this work, PIXE (13) was used to investigate the history of history of mammals by analyzing different annual rings layer of whale tooth. . Information about the trace elements in tooth is important for several reasons. (i) Most mammals have life spans that exceed 1 year. (ii) Information can be used for evaluation the environmental pollution in the Sea or Ocean (ii) Information also can be used to know the migration, seasons and the diets of mammals.