Microstructural Geochronology: Planetary Records Down to Atom Scale

From stacked sedimentary strata to radioactive atoms and their decay products, the science of geochronology has seen a range of methods for the measurement of the age and sequence of past events preserved in natural materials. Geochronologists now recognize that even planet-scale events can be recorded, sometimes uniquely, in the microscopic minerals historically used for U-Th-Pb isotope geochronology: a benchmark method for the geological timescale. The richness of information that can be recovered from these minerals continues to expand, and includes trace element chemistry and zonation, deformation history using lattice planes as time markers, and even nanostructures consisting of the radiogenic isotopes themselves. We have termed this approach of gleaning spatial and chemical time information from crystals "microstructural geochronology." The purpose of this monograph is to give examples of some of these new classes of time information, and communicate the techniques needed for measuring and interpreting natural history at micrometer to atomic scale.