Calibration of fossil scleraxonian Southern Ocean deep-sea corals for U-series dating

The deep Southern Ocean has been pinpointed as candidate reservoir capable of storing the additional respired carbon that was drawn from the atmosphere during the Last Glacial Maximum compared with the present-day. In this context the determination of deep ocean ventilation ages is a commonly applied tool, potentially identifying radiocarbon depletion in glacial deep water and enhanced ocean stratification. In order to derive deep-sea ventilation ages most studies to date have used either radiocarbon age differences between paired planktic and benthic foraminifera samples or coupled U-Th and radiocarbon dates obtained from aragonitic deep-sea corals. Results from both these approaches are, however, as yet very scarce for the Southern Ocean. We present calendar ages for a set of deep-sea scleraxonian corals from the Marie Byrd Seamounts in the Amundsen Sea sector of the Southern Ocean (~123°W, ~69°S, 2500 m to 1430 m water depth) employing the 230Th/U-dating method. The aim of our study is to evaluate whether these calcitic octocorals can be used for ventilation age determinations. Our corals have significantly lower uranium concentrations than aragonitic deep-sea corals, ranging from 80 to 250 ng/g. Most corals of Holocene age reproduced the present-day seawater 234U/238U. Pre-Holocene corals, however, show a systematic enrichment of 234U, leading to slightly elevated deglacial initial 234U/238U and significantly higher 234U/238U for ~MIS5 sub-samples. These corals also appear to grow very slowly, on the order of only few μm/year, making it essential to sample as little coral material as possible for combined 230Th/U- and radiocarbon dating purposes. One coral, sampled at high-resolution in various sections returned ages that scatter around 10 ka BP and the early deglaciation, though several significantly older ages were obtained as well. The present-day (234U/238U) ACT in different sections of this coral is very homogenous (1.155 ± 0.003) and more or less independent of apparent age, suggesting effective preferential 234U diffusion throughout the coral. Strikingly this composition is also higher than the present-day seawater (234U/238U) ACT of 1.147. We show the apparent 230Th/U coral ages and 234U/238U results alongside coral major and trace element ratios obtained by laser ablation along selected transects, to better characterize U diffusion pathways and mechanisms, to identify internal diagenetic alteration rims and to evaluate the presence of coral paleo- surfaces.