Dating Methods of Cold-water Corals and Their Application in Reconstructing Carbon-reservoir Ages of Intermediate and Deep Oceans

Establishing a precise chorology is a critical issue when employing cold-water coral as paleoenvironmental archives. Currently, U-Th, ¹⁴C and ²¹⁰Pb dating techniques are the most frequently used methods. The high-magnesium calcite skeleton of bamboo coral has clear growth bands, which is appropriate for ¹⁴C and ²¹⁰Pb dating methods and holds a great potential to be high-resolution archives of mid-to-deep ocean evolution. Aragonitic stony coral is appropriate for both U-Th and ¹⁴C dating methods, which is valuable in paleoceanographic research. Because the U-Th method can provide the absolute chronology of coral samples, it can further be used to calculate the ¹⁴C age of ocean carbon reservoirs. Therefore, U-Th and ¹⁴C dating results of stony coral are currently the most reliable data for exploring the evolution of ocean carbon reservoirs through the Last Glacial Maximum to the present. It has been found that the ¹⁴C ventilation ages of intermediate water masses of the equatorial Atlantic and Southern Ocean significantly decreased at the end of the Heinrich Stadial 1. This suggests a massive carbon transfer from deep oceans to the atmosphere, or the Atlantic intermediate depths were ventilated by the southern- and the northern-sourced water masses, respectively, before and after the Heinrich Stadial 1.