Abstract
The loess-paleosol archive from Mircea Vodă (Romania) represents one of the most studied sections in Europe. We are applying here the current state of the art luminescence dating protocols for revisiting the chronology of this section. Analysis were performed on fine (4–11 µm) and coarse (63–90 µm) quartz extracts using the single aliquot regenerative (SAR) optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating protocol. Laboratory generated SAR dose response curves in the high dose range (5 kGy for fine quartz and 2 kGy for coarse quartz) were investigated by employing a test dose of either 17 or 170 Gy. The results confirm the previously reported different saturation characteristics of the two quartz fractions, with no evident dependency of the equivalent dose (De) on the size of the test dose. The OSL SAR ages are discussed and compared to the previously obtained results on quartz and feldspars. The previous reports regarding the chronological discrepancy between the two quartz fractions are confirmed. However, while previous investigations on other sites concluded that this discrepancy appears only above equivalent doses of about 100 Gy, here fine grain quartz ages underestimate coarse quartz ages starting with equivalent doses as low as around 50 Gy.
Highlights
The development of the single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) protocol [1] for optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz has revolutionized the luminescence dating method by giving rise to high precision equivalent dose estimates
In the light of these findings, we are applying here the single aliquot regeneration dating protocol on quartz of different grain sizes for revisiting the chronology of Mircea-Vodă loess paleosol sequence in Romania. This is the site where we have reported for the first time various problems when investigating different quartz grain sizes [8] and we have subsequently applied alternative luminescence dating protocols on feldspars [14,15]
The ages obtained ranged from 8.7 ± 1.3 to 159 ± 24 ka for fine silt-sized (4–11 μm) quartz and from 16 ± 2 ka to 230 ± 31 ka for fine sand-sized (63–90 μm) quartz, the difference varying between 20% to 70% [2,8]
Summary
The development of the single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) protocol [1] for optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz has revolutionized the luminescence dating method by giving rise to high precision equivalent dose estimates. More precise ages can be obtained by SAR-OSL, the validation of the accuracy of these OSL ages by independent age control is hindered by the lack of methods which can directly date the depositional time of the sediments. In this context, the identification of the paleosol associated with marine isotope stage (MIS) 5 is known to yield valuable time control as the identification of this paleosol provides a minimum age threshold for the sediments underlying it, which should be no younger than ~130 ka. In the case of another site on the Chinese Loess Plateau (Zhongjiacai), Buylaert et al [5] obtained for a sample taken from the lower part of the last interglacial paleosol an age of 69.8 ± 3.8 ka (De= 216 ± 6 Gy) on coarse (63–90 μm) quartz
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