Empirical calibration of the clumped isotope paleothermometer using calcites of various origins

2014

We present the first universal calibration of the clumped isotope thermometer for calcites of various mineralizing types. These are an eggshell of an ostrich, a tropical bivalve, a brachiopod shell, cold seep carbonate, and three foraminifera samples that grew between 9 and 38 C. CaCO3 was digested at 90 C using a common acid bath. Considering a difference in phosphoric acid fractionation factors between reaction at 25 and 90 C of 0.069& (Guo et al., 2009), the function between growth temperature T and the excess of 13 C– 18 O bonds in the evolved CO2 is expressed by a linear regression between 1/T 2 and absolute D47 (R 2 = 0.9915):