SPECIAL TOPICS

ZIRCON DATING - February 2008
 

The baseline time span for this database is 1997-October 31, 2007 (fifth bimonthly period in 2007). The resulting database contained 4,151 (10 years) and 1,513 (2 years) papers; 7,088 authors; 108 countries; 245 journals; and 1,843 institutions.

OVERVIEW

Zircon is a neosilicate mineral that is abundant in the Earth’s crust. Because it is so pervasive, zircon is used as a geochronological tool—scientists can gauge the rate of decay of radioactive uranium into lead, and thus deduce the age of the rock containing the zircon crystals. This use is the focus of our Special Topic this month.

Both the ten- and two-year paper lists follow a similar pattern. They are a mix of original articles and reviews looking at zircon dating from two different viewpoints: either reporting on studies which used zircon dating, or looking at the methodology of zircon dating itself.

Papers in the former category include reports on Archaen rocks in western Greenland and northwestern Scotland, the architecture of the ultrahigh-pressure Dabie Shan in China, placing the Permian-Triassic boundary in southern China, the evolution of the Circum-Indian orogens in eastern Gondwana, and the onset of the India-Asia continental collision in the western Himalayas.

Specific analyses employing zircon dating include uranium-lead radiometrics, SHRIMP, TIMS, TEMORA 1, CA-TIMS, and fission-tracking. Other papers in this listing discuss the interpretation of zircon data.

Methodology: To construct this database, papers were extracted based on title- and author-supplied keywords for Zircon Dating. The keywords used were as follows:

(zircon and (dat* or geochron*))

The baseline time span for this database is 1997-October 31, 2007 (fifth bimonthly period in 2007). The resulting database contained 4,151 (10 years) and 1,513 (2 years) papers; 7,088 authors; 108 countries; 245 journals; and 1,843 institutions.

Rankings: Once the database was in place, it was used to generate the lists of top 20 papers (two- and ten-year periods), authors, journals, institutions, and nations, covering a time span of 1997-October 31, 2007 (fifth bimonthly, a 10-year plus 10-month period).

The top 20 papers are ranked according to total cites. Rankings for author, journal, institution, and country are listed in three ways: according to total cites, total papers, and total cites/paper. The paper thresholds and corresponding percentages used to determine scientist, institution, country, and journal rankings according to total cites/paper, and total papers respectively are as follows: