Mid-Miocene cosmogenic upper limit for 10Be/21Ne burial age

Cosmogenic nuclide burial dating provides an alternative method for sediment dating, and the combination of radionuclide 10Be with noble gas isotope 21Ne would theoretically extend the burial dating range up to around 15 Ma ago, which endows 10Be/21Ne pair with huge potential in middle-Miocene sediment dating. Especially in the magnetostratigraphic studies of the Cenozoic sedimentary strata, the 10Be/21Ne pair could be expected to provide absolute age marker when the well-dated volcanic ash layer or bedded mammalian fossils are absent. However, the validity and accuracy of the 10Be/21Ne burial dating when used close to its limiting middle Miocene ages has not been assessed in case study. Here, we show our dating results of the sedimentary stratum samples, which deposited at the same bedding of the Vertebrate fossils of Platybelodon tongxinensis that offer an independent age constraint between 12 and 15 Ma. The 10Be/21Ne analyses yielded a mean burial age of 13.25 ± 0.33 Ma, which agrees well with the paleontological proxy, and the MSWD value of 0.66 indicates the good agreement of the apparent dispersion of six aliquots data with their individual measurement errors. In view of the extended applicable dating range of 10Be/21Ne pair, it is promising in providing absolute age marker or valuable chronological information for a variety of fields in Earth science and beyond.