Age Estimates for Globular Clusters in NGC 1399

We present high signal-to-noise Keck spectra for 10 globular clustersassociated with the giant Fornax elliptical NGC 1399, and compare measured lineindices with current stellar population models. Our data convincinglydemonstrate, for the first time, that at least some of the clusters in a giantelliptical galaxy have super-solar abundance ratios, similar to the hostgalaxy. From Hbeta line-strengths the majority of clusters have ages of ~11Gyrs (within 2sigma), which is similar to the luminosity-weighted stellar ageof NGC 1399. Two of the clusters (which also reveal enhanced abundance ratios)show significantly higher Hbeta values than the others. It remains unclearwhether this is due to young (~2 Gyr) ages, or extremely old (> 15 Gyr) ageswith a warm blue horizontal branch. However a conflict with currentcosmological parameters is avoided if the young age is favored. Eitheralternative indicates a complicated age distribution among the metal-richclusters and sets interesting constraints on their chemical enrichment at lateepochs.Comment: 5 pages, Latex, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in ApJ