Radiocarbon Dating of Deep-Sea Sediments: A Comparison of Accelerator Mass Spectrometer and Beta-Decay Methods

Radiocarbon dating (Libby, 1955) has been an important tool in the marine sciences since the early 1950s (eg, Arrhenius, Kjellberg & Libby, 1951; Ericsonet al, 1956; Broecker, Ewing & Heezen, 1960; Emery & Bray, 1962) and the basic principles and analytic procedures of the method have changed little. In the late 1970s, the Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) method of14C dating was developed (Bennettet al, 1977, 1978), the major advantages being that samples several thousand times smaller than needed for beta-decay counting can be dated, and analysis time is reduced to ca 1 hr from the 1–6 days needed for beta-decay methods.