Quantifying the impact of µCT-scanning of human fossil teeth on ESR age results.
Fossil human teeth are nowadays systematically CT-scanned by palaeoanthropologists prior to any further analysis. It has been recently demonstrated that this noninvasive technique has, in most cases, virtually no influence on ancient DNA preservation. However, it may have nevertheless an impact on other techniques, like Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) dating, by artificially ageing the apparent age of the sample. To evaluate this impact, we µCT-scanned several modern enamel fragments following the standard analytical procedures employed by the Dental Anthropology Group at CENIEH, Spain, and then performed ESR dose reconstruction for each of them. The results of our experiment demonstrate that the systematic high-resolution µCT-scanning of fossil hominin remains introduces a nonnegligible X-ray dose into the tooth enamel, equivalent to 15-30 Gy depending on the parameters used. This dose may be multiplied by a factor of ∼8 if no metallic filter is used. However, this dose estimate cannot be universally extrapolated to any µCT-scan experiment but has instead to be specifically assessed for each device and set of parameters employed. The impact on the ESR age results is directly dependent on the magnitude of the geological dose measured in fossil enamel but could potentially lead to an age overestimation up to 40% in case of Late Pleistocene samples, if not taken into consideration.
Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), Burgos, 09002, Spain.|Australian Research Centre of Human Evolution, Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, 4111, Australia.
Mathieu
0000-0003-3181-7753
M
Duval
Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), Burgos, 09002, Spain.|Anthropology Department, University College of London, London, WC1H 0BW, UK.
Laura
L
Martín-Francés
D000818:Animals; D003743:Dental Enamel / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000528:radiation effects*; D004578:Electron Spin Resonance Spectroscopy; D005580:Fossils / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D015186:Hominidae; D006801:Humans; D059125:Neanderthals; D010163:Paleontology / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards; D014070:Tooth / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000528:radiation effects*; D055114:X-Ray Microtomography
X-ray dose; electron spin resonance dating; fossil tooth enamel; µCT-scan