Radiocarbon dating with accelerator mass spectrometry

Radiocarbon dating by means of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) has two great advantages over conventional dating: 1) much smaller samples can be handled and 2) counting time is significantly shorter. Three examples are given for Holocene-age material from east-central Ellesmere Island. The results demonstrate the potential use of this technique as a powerful research tool in studies of Quaternary chronology. Individual fragments of marine shells as small as 0.1 g have been dated successfully at the IsoTrace Laboratory, University of Toronto. In the case of an aquatic moss from a lake sediment core, an increment 0.5 cm thick could be used instead of a 5 cm-thick slice, thus allowing a much more precise estimate of the onset of organic sedimentation