TRACES laboratory

TRACES lab

Tracing Rare Isotopes And Chronology for Human Evolution

Our laboratory is where we turn our rocks into data using rare isotopes within them. This allows us to quantify past climate and environmental change. This is important as the climatic and environmental context formed the backdorp to early human expansion, adaptation and evolution.

We have world-class facilities in our laboratory including a RESOlution SE laser ablation system, a NuInstruments AttoM HS-ICPMS and a 350 class clean room. Our lab is the first U-Th-Pb dating laboratory on the African continent. Read more about our facilities and affiliated labs below.

TRACES facilities

HEPA-filtered clean room

RESOlution SE 193nm excimer laser ablation system

Nu Instruments AttoM ES HR-ICPMS

Low-level U-Th-Pb geochronology

We are about to launch our U-Th-Pb chemistry laboratory where we can routinely perform column dissolution chemistry on secondary carbonates. Here we separate the U, Th and Pb from our samples in order to date them using a NuInstruments MC-ICPMS or HR-ICPMS.

Laser ablation

The RESOlution laser allows us to analyse samples in situ by ablating directly from the sample's surface. It will be coupled with the HR-ICPMS to do extremely fast, accurate and precise trace elements analyses and U-Pb dating. We can analyse spotsizes from 300 μm down to 2 μm!

High resolution mass spectrometry

Our new AttoM high resolution ICPMS will arrive in June 2022. This machine will be coupled with the laser and allows us analyse 73 trace elements in less than 105 ms (!) including our favourites: U, Th and Pb. We can analyse both bulk (solution) and in situ (solid) material.