Abstract. The same unetched and chemically etched apatite crystals from five rock samples were dated by the U–Pb method via laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA–ICP-MS). objective of this study is to test whether chemical etching required for fission track analysis impacts precision accuracy geochronology. results experiment suggest that has insignificant effects on a...

Quantifying the erosional and kinematic evolution of orogenic plateaus has been limited by insufficient age constraints on their deformation and erosion histories. Palinspastic restorations suggest the central Andean fold-thrust belt and plateau evolved concurrently in Bolivia. We present an analysis that synthesizes 19 new and 32 previous apatite and zircon fission-track and (U–Th)/He mineral ...

Etched tracks of apatite and zircon are both widely used for the determination of the thermal history of Earth’s crust. The present understanding of the annealing process is largely limited to mathematical fits to data for etched track-lengths as a function of temperature and time. Details of the annealing of unetched, latent tracks at the atomic scale have remained elusive, as the original tra...