A brief introduction on dating methods of marine sediments

Marine sediment is one of important carriers for studying the issues on global scale, such as global climate, sea-level fluctuation, paleontological productivity evolution and geochemical cycle, etc. And accurate age-dating is the most important prerequisites for the above studies. With the constantly breakthrough of marine sediment dating theory and technical equipment, dating methods such as ²¹⁰Pb, ¹³⁷Cs, AMS¹⁴C, optically stimulated luminescence, paleomagnetism, astronomical orbit tuning, oxygen isotope curve comparison, electron paramagnetic resonance and uranium series dating are appearing over the past one hundred years. This paper summarizes the basic principles, applicable objects and age ranges of different methods that commonly used in marine geology, combing the advantages and disadvantages of different dating methods, so that scientific researchers can choose the suitable measurement in face of various type marine sediments. Each method has its own limitations, in order to obtain a more accurate time scale, it is necessary to use several dating methods on the same research object for mutual verification, to improve the accuracy and precision.