Acquisition of a New Generation Mass Spectrometer for 40Ar/39Ar Dating in Human Origins Research

这项奖励允许伯克利地质年代学中心(BGC)的科学家购买一台新的质谱仪用于40Ar/39Ar测年，以应对建立人类进化时间表的持续挑战。了解人类和原始人进化的时间和节奏需要对化石和文物进行准确的年代测定。由于缺乏化石物种的DNA，用于推断系统发育关系的一些最有用的证据来自分类群之间的时间关系，通过在校准的时间序列中对化石和文物进行简单的排序。越来越明显的是，就环境压力而言，更好地理解进化因果关系需要有能力将物种形成、辐射和灭绝等进化过程与环境变化联系起来。例如，面对越来越多的证据表明，在短至1万年的时间尺度上存在巨大的气候波动，能够以类似的分辨率测定进化事件的日期变得至关重要。BGC实验室作为其悠久历史的一部分，应用了K-Ar测年技术，它是40Ar/39Ar测年方法的更精确和准确的变体，用于过去50年的考古测量问题。在过去的20年里，该实验室一直在使用特定类型的质谱仪(旨在测量极少量氩气体的同位素)(来自现已不复存在的英国曼彻斯特质量分析仪产品)。然而，在过去三年左右的时间里，适合于这一目的的质谱仪在以更快的速度和更准确的速度测量气体的能力上突然实现了巨大的飞跃。为这一级别的现代质谱仪提供资金将使BGC能够利用这一新的强大工具，在化石人类及其考古记录测年的准确性和精确度以及必须理解它们的古环境背景的年代学方面产生改进。总而言之，该奖项允许BGC利用最近的技术发展和部署新的测年能力，这将显著提高可测年的材料范围、测年的精确度和精确度，以及分析吞吐量。这项提议支持购买一种全新类型的质谱仪，这将是全自动系统的基石，该系统能够提供比以往任何用于考古问题的同类系统更多和更好的数据。BGC在开发和实施这类设施方面有着广泛的记录，并长期致力于将其应用于支持古人类学和考古学研究。BGC在辅助设备、软件开发和技术支持方面的承诺确保了NSF资金的高度杠杆化。

This award permits of at the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC) to purchase a new mass spectrometer for 40Ar/39Ar dating in order to address the ongoing challenge of establishing the timescale of human evolution. Understanding the timing and tempo of human and hominid evolution requires the accurate dating of fossils and artifacts. Lacking DNA from fossil species, some of the most useful lines of evidence for inferring phylogenetic relationships come from temporal relations between taxa, via the simple ordering of fossils and artifacts in a calibrated time sequence. It is increasingly apparent that improved understanding of evolutionary causality in terms of environmental pressures requires the ability to correlate evolutionary processes such as speciation, radiation and extinction with environmental change. In the face of mounting evidence for large climate fluctuations on timescales as short as 10,000 years, for example, it becomes critical to be able to date evolutionary events with comparable resolution.The BGC laboratory as part of it's long history has applied the K-Ar dating technique, and it's more precise and accurate variant the 40Ar/39Ar dating method, to archaeometric problems for the past 50 years. For the past 20 years the laboratory has been using mass spectrometers (machines designed to measure the isotopes of vanishingly small quantities of argon gas) of a particular genre (from the now non-existent Mass Analyzer Products of Manchester, England). However, in the past three years or so, mass spectrometers suitable for this purpose have suddenly made a quantum leap in their ability to measure gasses with greater speed and accuracy. Funding for a modern mass spectrometer of this class will permit BGC to bring this new powerful tool to bear, yielding improvements in the accuracy and precision of dating of fossil hominids and their archeological records, as well as the chronology of the paleoenvironmental context within which they must be understood.In summary, this award permits the BGC to exploit recent technical developments and emplace new dating capabilities which will significantly enhance the scope of materials that can be dated, the precision and accuracy of dating, and the analytical throughput. This proposal supports the purchase of a fundamentally new type of mass spectrometer, which will be the cornerstone of a fully automated system capable of delivering more and better data than any previous system of its kind applied to archaeometric problems. The BGC has an extensive record of development and implementation of such facilities, and a longstanding commitment to their application in support of paleoanthropological and archeological research. BGC's commitment of ancillary equipment, software development, and technical support ensures that NSF funding is highly leveraged.