Archaeology, history, and geology of the A.D. 749 earthquake, Dead Sea Email alerting services cite this article to receive free e-mail alerts when new articles www.gsapubs.org/cgi/alerts click Subscribe to subscribe to Geology www.gsapubs.org/subscriptions/ click Permission request to contact GSA http://www.geosociety.org/pubs/copyrt.htm#gsa click viewpoint. Opinions presented in this publication do not reflect official positions of the Society. positions by scientists worldwide, regardless of their race, citizenship, gender, religion, or political article's full citation. GSA provides this and other forums for the presentation of diverse opinions and articles on their own or their organization's Web site providing the posting includes a reference to the science. This file may not be posted to any Web site, but authors may post the abstracts only of their unlimited copies of items in GSA's journals for noncommercial use in classrooms to further education and to use a single figure, a single table, and/or a brief paragraph of text in subsequent works and to make GSA, employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted permission, without fees or further requests to

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ABSTRACT. We investigated the feasibility of using Melanopsis shells as radiocarbon chronometers of paleolakes and springs in the Jordan Valley, Israel. For this purpose, we analyzed the ,4 C content of aragonite of living Melanopsis shells from different freshwater bodies of the northern Jordan Valley and Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) and compared them to the contemporaneous water values. The Melanopsis shells are in 14 C equilibrium with their habitat waters, allowing to specify a particular reservoir age for various water types. We measured -750 yr for Lake Kinneret, -2300 yr for northern Jordan, -4600 yr for springs in the north Kinneret, and -7200 yr for streams flowing directly from carbonate aquifers. These results were tested and corroborated by analyzing fossil Melanopsis shells of known age, measured on contemporaneous organic matter. We conclude that Melanopsis shells are reliable 14 C chronometers and have the potential to be used as paleohydrological tracers.

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