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Ghost age components in detrital thermochronology

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dc.contributor.authorHartel, B.
dc.contributor.authorVermeesch, P.
dc.contributor.authorEnkelmann, E.
dc.contributor.authorGlorie, S.
dc.date.issued2024
dc.descriptionAvailable online 12 September 2024
dc.description.abstractThermochronological dating of detrital samples is an important tool for understanding the thermal history of basins and their source regions. Detrital thermochr onology data are often complex with apparent ages ranging over hundreds of million years due to variations in source rock cooling age and rate, and the influence of post depositional burial. A common strategy to interpret such data is to split a dataset in to several age components by finite mixture modeling. Herein, we describe for the first time a remarkable pattern of age components in some thermochronological datasets: two or more components showing ages that are approximately multiples of each other. We apply finite-mixture modeling to a log-normal age distribution (a random effects model) and show that these “ghost age components” are artifacts of inappropriately fitting discrete components to continuous age ranges. The striking pattern of the age components is a direct consequence of the underlying age distribution. For a continuous log-normal age distribution, the ghost components have approximately similar age ratios that depend on the overdispersion and the number of components. Due to their artifactual nature, ghost components appear in a range of dating methods, including fission-track, U-Pb and (U-Th)/He dating, and in equivalent doses of luminescence dating. As they are not geologically meaningful, their occurrence hampers the geological interpretation of thermochronological data. We thus propose to carefully decide for the number of fitted components based on grain properties and additional geological information and to screen modeling results for the constant age ratios that are characteristic of ghost components.
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityB. Härtel, Pieter Vermeesch, Eva Enkelmann, and Stijn Glorie
dc.identifier.citationChemical Geology, 2024; 670:122406-1-122406-10
dc.identifier.doi10.1016/j.chemgeo.2024.122406
dc.identifier.issn0009-2541
dc.identifier.issn0009-2541
dc.identifier.orcidGlorie, S. [0000-0002-3107-9028]
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/2440/142394
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherElsevier BV
dc.relation.granthttp://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT210100906
dc.rights© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
dc.source.urihttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2024.122406
dc.subjectThermochronology; detrital; age populations; finite mixture modeling; artifacts
dc.titleGhost age components in detrital thermochronology
dc.typeJournal article
pubs.publication-statusPublished

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