IODP constraints on the (234U/238U) history of seawater   Email     Print   PDF

Gideon Henderson, Alex Thomas

Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford (gideonh@earth.ox.ac.uk)

            The Bahamas and Tahiti have both been selected for drilling by the international ocean drilling consortium (during ODP Leg 166 in 1997 and IODP Expedition 310 in 2007), and both provide information about the history of seawater (²³⁴U/²³⁸U).  On the Bahamas the information is captured in aragonite-rich slope sediment and provide a long-term constraint on (²³⁴U/²³⁸U).  High-precision data on corals from Tahiti provide constrains on glacial-interglacial changes in (²³⁴U/²³⁸U).  We will summarize these records and their implications for open and closed system U/Th dating of corals.