Exposure dating with manganese-53, neon-21 and beryllium-10: a new toolkit for studying long-term landscape evolution

A new method for dating ancient landsurfaces will be established, using cosmogenic manganese-53. This stems from recent advances in accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) at the Australian National University (ANU), one of only two AMS laboratories in the world able to make the measurements. Manganese-53 is particularly suited to dating Australia s iron-rich arid land surfaces. By coupling manganese-53 with cosmogenic neon-21 and beryllium-10, which now can both be accurately measured at ANU, Australia s desert landscapes and the onset of arid conditions will be dated, furnishing the time-frame in which our arid ecosystems have evolved.