Uranium/lead dating provides most accurate date yet for Earth's largest extinction

A new study by geologists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center and the University of California, Berkeley, improves upon a widely used dating technique, opening the possibility of a vastly more accurate time scale for major geologic events in Earth's history.
In a paper published this week in Science, geochemist Roland Mundil of the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC) and his colleagues at BGC and UC Berkeley report that uranium/lead (U/Pb) dating can be extremely accurate - to within 250,000 years - but only if the zircons from volcanic ash used in the analysis are specially treated. To date, zircons - known to many as a semiprecious stone and December's birthstone - have often produced confusing and inaccurate results.

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All News summaries for September 16, 2004