Terrestrial ages of ordinary chondrites from the Lewis Cliff stranding area, East Antarctica

Abstract— We determined terrestrial ages of ordinary chondrites from the Lewis Cliff stranding area, East Antarctica, on the basis of the concentrations of cosmogenic 10Be (t½; = 1.51 Ma), 26Al (t½; = 0.705 Ma), and 36Cl (t½; = 0.301 Ma). After an initial 26Al γ-ray survey of 91 meteorites suggested that many have terrestrial ages >0.1 Ma, we selected 62 meteorites for 10Be and 26Al measurements by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) and measured 36Cl in twelve of those. Low terrestrial ages ( 2 Ma (Welten et al., 1997). Our major conclusions are: (1) The Lewis Cliff H-chondrites show similar ages to those from the Allan Hills icefields, but the L-chondrites are about a factor of 2 younger than those from Allan Hills, which indicates that Lewis Cliff is a younger stranding area. (2) The terrestrial age distributions at different parts of the Lewis Cliff stranding area generally agree with simple meteorite concentration models, although differences in weathering rate may also play a role. (3) We confirm that meteorites with natural thermoluminescence (TL) levels >80 krad are associated with low terrestrial ages (Benoit et al., 1992) but conclude that natural TL levels <80 krad can not be used to calculate the terrestrial age of a meteorite. Natural TL levels do seem useful to estimate relative terrestrial ages of large groups of meteorites and to determine differences in the surface exposure age of paired meteorite fragments. (4) Of the 62 meteorites measured with AMS, 31 were assigned to 11 different pairing groups, mainly on the basis of their cosmogenic nuclide record. The meteorites are estimated to represent between 42 and 52 distinct falls.