Content of¹⁴C in Marine Mammals from Northern Europe

Abstract

The reservoir effect of Scandinavian sea water has been determined by dating seals and whales killed well before man's impact on the natural 14C concentration became significant. The samples were collected at different places along the Swedish coasts and in the Gulf of Finland. They derive from AD 1657 or 1658, 1868, 1875, 1894, and 1906. The EDTA treatment of bones was used to obtain collagen free from contaminants.An elk, originating from AD 1881 was selected for comparison. A seal from AD 1899 from the Caspian Sea was also included in the investigation.All results have been normalized to 413C = -25% vs PDB. The determinations yield values of the reservoir effect in agreement with earlier results obtained from shells and mammals. The final results are discussed in light of previous variations of 14C content in the atmosphere. Using a smoother curve, the reservoir effect is slightly smaller than was hitherto believed.An event thought to be of cosmic origin caused the count rate of both proportional and Geiger counters to increase significantly around December 4, 1978. The correction for this has been studied. The statistics for background, oxalic acid, and unknown samples, measured repeatedly after this correction, were as good as usual.

Severnaya Zemlya, Arctic Russia: a nucleation area for Kara Sea ice sheets during the Middle to Late Quaternary

“…Wood pre-treatment employed standard Acid-Base-Acid washes. Mollusc and whalebone ages were reservoir-corrected by subtraction of 440 years from the laboratory-reported, d 13 C-corrected ages (Mangerud and Gulliksen, 1975;Olsson, 1980;Forman and Polyak, 1997). To assist a first-order comparison to other dating methods, corrected ages up to 50 14 C ka were calibrated based on the University of Cologne Radiocarbon Calibration Program Package (CALPAL) using the CALPAL 2004 SFCP data set (CALPAC website).…”

Late Quaternary environmental history of central Prins Karls Forland, western Svalbard

“…4 As per convention all 14 C ages have been normalized to À25% 13 C. 5 From Forman (1990). The reported 14 C age was corrected for a marine reservoir effect of 300 years (Olsson 1980). 6 Pretreatment of shells prior to dating include a 50% leach in hydrochloric acid.…”

Atlantic Water advection vs. glacier dynamics in northern Spitsbergen since early deglaciation

“…Austin et al, 1995Austin et al, , 2011Bard et al, 1994;Hanslik et al, 2010;Waelbroeck et al, 2001). However, as no information about palaeo-reservoir ages is available for the Svalbard area (see alsoŚlubowska-Woldengen et al, 2007), we applied an averaged regional reservoir age correction ( R = 98 ± 37 years), based on six R values from the Svalbard region (Mangerud, 1972;Mangerud and Gulliksen, 1975;Olsson, 1980) derived from the Marine Reservoir Correction Database (calib.qub. ac.uk/marine/).…”