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New marine reservoir effect corrections for coasts of Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2025

Maikel Díaz-Castro Open the ORCID record for Maikel Díaz-Castro [Opens in a new window] ,
María Rodríguez-Ceja Open the ORCID record for María Rodríguez-Ceja [Opens in a new window] ,
Corina Solís Open the ORCID record for Corina Solís [Opens in a new window]  and
Luis Álvarez-Lajonchere
Maikel Díaz-Castro*
Affiliation:
Instituto Superior de Tecnología y Ciencias Aplicadas, Universidad de la Habana, Ave. Salvador Allende y Luaces, Plaza de la Revolución, Cuba
María Rodríguez-Ceja
Affiliation:
Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Ciudad Universitaria, 04510, Ciudad de México, México
Corina Solís
Affiliation:
Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Ciudad Universitaria, 04510, Ciudad de México, México
Luis Álvarez-Lajonchere
Affiliation:
Museo de Historia Natural Felipe Poey. Facultad Biología. Universidad de la Habana, U.H., San Lazaro y Calle L, CP 10400, Havana, Cuba
*
Corresponding author: Maikel Díaz-Castro; Email: mikefncu@gmail.com
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Abstract

Radiocarbon (14C) activity in aquatic environments is usually different from that of the atmosphere, the result being that organisms that grow in these different environments will have different 14C ages, even though they are contemporary. This age offset in marine samples is known as the “marine reservoir effect.” The marine calibration curve takes this effect into account as a global approximation, but local variations due to ocean dynamics and other factors must be individually studied and corrected for. With a littoral of more than 11,000 km and a great interest in dating malacological marine samples, Mexico has scarce local reservoir effect studies. Most of the available data come from studies done in the 1960s and 1990s. In this study, we present new reservoir effect corrections for four sites in the Pacific Ocean with positive ΔR values as expected, and one from the Caribbean Sea with a negative average value of ΔR. The results were obtained by dating known-age shells from the malacological collection of the Natural History Museum Felipe Poey, in Havana, Cuba. This new data will be useful to do more precise reservoir effect corrections to malacological samples of the region, with special interest in contexts where it is difficult to date other kinds of organic samples, due to difficulties in their preservation.

Keywords

marine reservoir effectpre-bomb shells

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Type
Conference Paper
Information
Radiocarbon , First View , pp. 1 - 8
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Arizona

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Footnotes

Selected Papers from the 2nd Latin American Radiocarbon Conference, Mexico City, 4–8 Sept. 2023

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