Comparison of U-series and radiocarbon dates of speleothems.

Abstract

The paper presents a comparison of U-series and radiocarbon dates of speleothems collected in several caves in central and southern Europe and southeast Africa. Despite a large spread of dates, mainly due to contamination with younger carbon, the group of corresponding (super 14) C and (super 230) Th/U ages of speleothem samples seems to be coherent with the previous suggestion of large deviation between the (super 14) C and the absolute time scale between 35 and 45 ka BP. This agrees with the result of frequency analysis of published (super 14) C and (super 230) Th/U ages of speleothem.