Quartz SAR-OSL Ages for South Australian Beach Dunes

Over 800,000 years of sea-level history is recorded in a sequence of stranded coastal barriers in south-east South Australia. The dataset contains quartz single-aliquot regenerative-dose optically stimulated luminescence (SAR-OSL) ages for dune systems, including the Robe II (60 ka) and Robe III (100 ka) ranges, produced by researchers comparing these ages to an existing independent chronology. The data is provided by the Australian Ocean Data Network and was last updated in April 2026.

Use Cases

• Calibrate SAR-OSL dating accuracy by comparing quartz SAR-OSL ages with independent chronology for dunes younger than 240 ka, where agreement is within 1-sigma errors.
• Validate luminescence methods over an extended 0-250 ka age range using age data from the Robe II (60 ka) and Robe III (100 ka) dune ranges.
• Analyze the monotonic increase in OSL ages from the Robe II range to the West Naracoorte range to model coastal progradation and sea-level change over 800 ka.
• Assess the consistency of SAR-OSL ages for older dunes (>240 ka) where they agree with independent ages within 2-sigma error limits.

Strengths

• Covers an extended age range of 0 to 250 thousand years for method validation.
• Provides age comparisons against an independent chronology for validation, with specific error limits (1-sigma for younger, 2-sigma for older dunes).
• Documents ages for specific, named dune sequences (e.g., Robe II at 60 ka, Robe III at 100 ka).

Limitations

• Specific row count, sample size, and number of individual age measurements are unknown.
• Data format is HTML, which may require parsing to extract structured numerical data.
• Geographic coverage is limited to a specific sequence in south-east South Australia.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Quartz single-aliquot regenerative-dose optically stimulated luminescence (SAR-OSL) dating on extracts from stranded coastal dune sediments.

Time Range

Covers the past 800,000 years, with validation focus on 0-250 ka.

Freshness

Last updated in April 2026.

Geography

Stranded coastal barrier sequence in south-east South Australia.