U-Pb dating of calcium carbonate using LA-MC-ICPMS

Yokoyama, Tatsunori; Kokubu, Yoko; Mitsuguchi, Takehiro; Murakami, Hiroaki; Hirata, Takafumi*; Sakata, Shuhei*; Danhara, Toru*; Iwano, Hideki*; Maruyama, Seiji*; Miyazaki, Takashi*; et al.

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Chronological and geochemical studies of calcium carbonates can provide precious information for changes in geochemical condition in deep geological environments. Because the carbonate can be found as common filling minerals in rocks, age zoning and spatial distribution of chemical composition in the carbonate could be a wide-use indicator to reconstruct the past environmental changes. Calcite and other carbonate materials have been dated by Isotope Dilution-Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometry. On the other hand, a few of U-Pb dating studies in a micro scale area (less than 10 micrometer) such as using laser ablation-multiple collector-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-MC-ICPMS) has been conducted on the carbonate. The U-Pb dating technique for the carbonates using LA-MC-ICPMS is still immature partly because of a lack of consensus international carbonate reference materials for the in-situ dating technique. In order to solve this problem, we performed a survey on the carbonate reference materials that may be suitable for high precision U-Pb dating using LA-MC-ICPMS. Additionally, we conducted experiments to make compositionally homogeneous carbonate (calcite) reference materials.