In order to determine the pattern and timing of exhumation and uplift in the Teton Range, fission-track analysis of apatites has been applied to three sections encompassing ~ 2 km of vertical relief along the Teton escarpment. The resulting data provide new insights on the doming of the Precambrian-Cambrian unconformity and on the Teton exhumation/uplift history prior to the Miocene initiation ...

Apatite [Ca5(PO4)3(F,Cl)] is a common mineral in rocks that contains ~10 ppm U. U disintegrates by spontaneous fission and the fission fragments produce linear damage trails of ~20 μm length and 5-10 nm width. The lattice damage along such a fission track is repaired at elevated temperatures, leading to a gradual decrease of its etchable length. Since fresh tracks are formed as existing tracks ...

The Tien Shan are the quintessential intracontinental range, situated more than 1000 km north of the suture between India and Asia. Their initiation and growth in the Cenozoic, however, remain poorly understood. In this study we present stratigraphic, detrital fission-track, and magnetostratigraphic results that provide a basis for reconstructing the Cenozoic tectonic evolution of the Kyrgyz Ra...

This report describes BINOMFIT, a program for estimating components in a mixed distribution of fission-track (FT) grain ages. BINOMFIT has been around for some 10 years, but we have just finished building a Windows version that is much easier to use and provides extensive options for displaying and recording results. The program and source code (Visual Basic 6) are available, along with other F...

The fission-track dating technique is an important tool to constrain the history of samples from small archaeological specimens to large geological formations. The method is based on analyzing particle tracks produced by spontaneous fission of 238 U nuclei and accumulated over time. In laboratory experiments, fission tracks can be simulated by performing irradiations with energetic heavy ions p...

Fission track dating has greatly expanded its usefulness to geology over the last 40 years. It is central to thermochronology—the use of shortened fission tracks to decipher the thermal history, movement, and provenance of rocks. When combined with other indicators, such as zircon color and (U–Th)/He, a range of temperatures from 40 ◦C to 400 ◦C can be studied. Combining fission track analysis ...

Several natural minerals contain trace amounts of uranium. Spontaneous nuclear fission of U causes the formation of particle (fission) tracks along the trajectories of the ejected nuclear fragments. The lattice damage along a fission track is repaired at elevated temperatures, leading to a gradual reduction of its etchable length that depends foremost on the highest temperature that the track h...