[meteorite-list] Odessa Impact Crater and OSL Dating

[Paul]

        E.P. Grondine wrote:
 
“When
I visited Odessa I was told that it was suspected 
to be the impact of a fragment related to the Barringer 
impactor. My suspicion is that the Barringer impact is 
seen in the spike of C14 in the INTCAL98 chart around 
45,000 BCE. So what is OSL dating anyway, and how
accurate 
is it?”
 
The details of the dating of the Odessa crater is
discussed in:
 
Holliday, V. T., D. A. Kring, J. H. Mayer, and R. J.
Goble, 
2005, Age and effects of the Odessa meteorite impact,
western 
Texas, USA. Geology. vol. 33, no. 12, pp. 945-947.
 
Its abstract reads:
 
“Dating by optically stimulated luminescence indicates 
that it was produced immediately prior to ca. 63.5+/-
4.5 ka. Sediment filling the crater includes impact 
breccias produced at the time of impact; wind-dominated 
silts with minor amounts of pond sediments deposited ca. 
63.5 ka, probably just after the impact...”
 
The PDf file can be found at:
 
http://www.argonaut.arizona.edu/articles/holliday_etal2005.pdf
 
http://www.argonaut.arizona.edu/holliday.htm
 
Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating can be
quite 
accurate as cross-dating between contemporaneous OSL and 
radiocarbon samples has demonstrated. As with any other
dating
methods a person has to be careful in only dating
materials 
that can be reliably dated; in how they collect the
samples; 
and how they transport the samples to the OSL lab.
Single-grain 
OSL dating of sediments is the most reliable way of OSL
dating
sediments.
 
Web pages about OSL dating are “Luminescence Dating - 

Introduction and Overview of the the Technique” at:
 
http://crustal.usgs.gov/laboratories/luminescence_dating/technique.html

and "Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL)" at:

 
http://www.uic.edu/labs/ldrl/about.html
http://www.uic.edu/labs/ldrl/osl.html
 
A few of many, many papers and articles on OSL dating are:
 
1. Murray, A. M., J. M. Olley, 2002, Precision and
accuracy in 
the optically stimulated luminescence dating of
sedimentary 
quartz. Geochronometria. vol. 21, pp 1-16.
 
http://www.carbon14.pl/geo/pdf/Geo21.pdf.
 2. Ballarini, M., 2006, Optical Dating of Quartz from 
Young Deposits From Single-Aliquot to Single-Grain. Delft 
University Press, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
 
http://repository.tudelft.nl/file/224774/190288
 
3. optically stimulated luminescence dating— an
introduction
 
http://geoinfo.nmt.edu/publications/periodicals/nmg/29/n4/1%20OSLintro.pdf
 
Yours,
 
Paul H.