On the treatment of discordant detrital zircon U–Pb data

Vermeesch, Pieter

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gchron-3-247-2021

Articles | Volume 3, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/gchron-3-247-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gchron-3-247-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 3, issue 1

Research article

|

29 Apr 2021

Research article |

| 29 Apr 2021

On the treatment of discordant detrital zircon U–Pb data

Pieter Vermeesch

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Final revised paper (published on 29 Apr 2021)
Preprint (discussion started on 11 Dec 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Discordance of the detrital zircon U–Pb data', Ping Wang, 15 Jan 2021
- AC1: 'Reply on RC1', Pieter Vermeesch, 11 Feb 2021
RC2: 'Comments', Keith Sircombe, 31 Jan 2021
- AC2: 'Reply on RC2', Pieter Vermeesch, 11 Feb 2021

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (further review by editor) (15 Feb 2021) by Michael Dietze

AR by Pieter Vermeesch on behalf of the Authors (15 Feb 2021) Author's response Author's tracked changes Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (16 Feb 2021) by Michael Dietze

ED: Publish as is (18 Feb 2021) by Klaus Mezger (Editor)

AR by Pieter Vermeesch on behalf of the Authors (22 Feb 2021) Author's response Manuscript

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Short summary

This paper shows that the current practice of filtering discordant U–Pb data based on the relative difference between the ²⁰⁶Pb/²³⁸U and ²⁰⁷Pb/²⁰⁶Pb ages is just one of several possible approaches to the problem and demonstrably not the best one. An alternative approach is to define discordance in terms of isotopic composition, as a log ratio distance between the measurement and the concordia line. Application to real data indicates that this reduces the positive bias of filtered age spectra.