British Fossil Corals

Investigation of the various factors in destruction of living and fossil corals in Persian Golf

British fossil fish and amphibian sites

U/Th-dating living and young fossil corals from the central tropical Paci¢c

This study evaluates the accuracy of U/Th dates for young (6 a few thousand years old) reef corals, both living and fossil, and explores strategies for refining those dates. The high precision of the U/Th method (0 1^2%) for dating young corals is well-established. Earlier studies have demonstrated the method’s accuracy for select samples of known age. However, these studies have focused on typ...

Effects of diagenesis on paleoclimate reconstructions from modern and young fossil corals

The integrity of coral-based reconstructions of past climate variability depends on a comprehensive knowledge of the effects of post-depositional alteration on coral skeletal geochemistry. Here we combine millimeter-scale and micro-scale coral Sr/Ca data, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images, and X-ray diffraction with previously published dO records to investigate the effects of submarine...

Extending the radiocarbon calibration beyond 26,000 years before present using fossil corals

Fossil coral is an excellent archive to extend the radiocarbon (C) calibration beyond tree-ring records; however, published coral data older than 26,000 years before present are too disparate for practical calibration. We propose an explanation for these discrepancies: trace amounts of secondary calcite and organic matter in fossil corals shift the C ages toward younger ages. In a series of aci...