Fission track annealing and correction procedures for oceanic basalt glasses

Most published and unpublished fission track ages for glasses from oceanic basalts are low relative to age estimates from geologic evidence. Experiments reported here strongly suggest that this results from track annealing at ambient sea-floor temperatures. Four Deep Sea Drilling Project basalts exhibiting this effect were subjected to two independent correction procedures in an attempt to determine their true crystallization times. In all cases larger ages resulted, but dates by the two methods are not generally concordant and do not always agree with the estimated sea-floor age.