Isotope history

Despite the uncertainty about the rate of incorporation of °Thxs into Mn deposits, Th chronology can still provide some useful information about their growth rates. For instance, °Thxs has been used to suggest short-term changes in growth rates of Mn crusts (Eisenhauer et al. 1992) and to check the Be chronologies of crusts used to reconstruct the radiogenic isotope history of seawater (Abouchami et al. 1997 Frank 2002). 

Ehleringer, J.R. and Rundel, P.W. (1988). Stable isotopes history, units and instrumentation. In Stable Isotopes in Ecological Research, ed. Rundel, P.W., Ehleringer, J.R. and Nagy, K.A., Springer-Verlag, New York, pp. 1-15. 

Ehleringer JR, Rundel RW (1988) In Rundel RW, Ehleringer JR, Nagy KA (eds) Stable isotopes history units and instrumentation. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York,... 

While our description of this experiment ends this chapter on the discussion of isotope history, a few more notes are appropriate. The discovery of deuterium led to a rush of new work on deuterium, so much so that Urey published a review article on deuterium in 1935, including both work by himself and by his collaborators but also work by other groups (Urey and Teal 1935). Reading or perusing of this article is highly recommended. 

Knauth LP, Beeunas MA (1986) Isotope geochemistry of fluid inclusions in Permian hahte with implications for the isotopic history of ocean water and the origin of saline formation waters. Geochim Cosmochim Acta 50 419 33... 

Gregory R. T. (1991) Oxygen isotope history of seawater revisited composition of seawater. In Stable Isotope Geochemistry a Tribute to Samuel Epstein, Geochem. Soc. Spec. Publ. 3 (eds. H. P. Tailor, Jr., J. R. O Neil, and I. R. Kaplan), Min. Soc. America, Washington, DC, pp. 65-76. 

One particular class of Archaean mantle xenoliths has received special attention. These are eclogites recovered from the subcontinental lithosphere. Richardson et al. (2001) showed that some Archaean eclogite xenoliths have the trace element and Os-isotopic characteristics of a basaltic protolith and an isotopic history which shows a significant time gap between basalt generation and eclogite crystallization. These properties are typical of subducted ocean floor and indicate that the subcontinental lithosphere beneath the Kaapvaal Craton contains fragments of 2.9 Ga subducted ocean floor. 

H. W. Kirby and co-workers, eds., Gmelin Handbook of Inorganic Chemistg, Thorium, Suppl Hoi A2, History, Isotopes, Eecovery of Thorium, 8th ed.,... 

In 1934 Fermi decided to bombard uranium with neutrons in an attempt to produce transuranic elements, that is, elements beyond uranium, which is number 92 in the periodic table. He thought for a while that he had succeeded, since unstable atoms were produced that did not seem to correspond to any known radioactive isotope. I le was wrong in this conjecture, but the research itself would eventually turn out to be of momentous importance both for physics and for world history, and worthy of the 1938 Nobel Pri2e in Physics. 

All these potential complications mean that independent temperature-history information is very useful, though no other temperature reconstruction techniques yet match the very high resolution of these isotopes. 

Fig. 18-18 Top two panels show the history of Antarctic MSA fraction (Legrand et at., 1991), and coincident isotopic temperature history 0ouzel et al., 1993). Bottom two panels present a closer look at the last 25 kyr, for both Antarctica and Greenland (Saltzman et al., 1997).

---