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Phosphate oxygen isotope analysis on microsamples of bioapatite: removal of organic contamination and minimization of sample size
Author(s) -
WiedemannBidlack Felicitas B.,
Colman Albert S.,
Fogel Marilyn L.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
rapid communications in mass spectrometry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.528
H-Index - 136
eISSN - 1097-0231
pISSN - 0951-4198
DOI - 10.1002/rcm.3553
Subject(s) - chemistry , enamel paint , phosphate , isotopes of oxygen , isotope analysis , tooth enamel , hydroxylapatite , oxygen , environmental chemistry , apatite , carbonate , radiochemistry , nuclear chemistry , mineralogy , geology , organic chemistry , dentistry , medicine , oceanography , enzyme
Modern and fossil teeth record seasonal information on climate, diet, and migration through stable isotope compositions in enamel and dentine. Climatic signals such as seasonal variation in meteoric water isotopic composition can be recovered through a microscale histology‐based sampling and isotopic analysis of enamel phosphate oxygen. The phosphate moiety in bioapatite is particularly resistant to post mortem diagenesis. In order to determine the phosphate oxygen isotope composition of enamel, phosphate must be chemically purified from other oxygen sources in the enamel lattice and matrix, mainly hydroxyl and carbonate ions, and trace quantities of organics. We present a wet chemical technique for purifying phosphate from microsampled enamel and dentine. This technique uses a sodium hypochlorite oxidation step to remove interferences from residual organic constituents of the enamel and/or dentine scaffold, isolates phosphate as relatively large and easily manipulated Ag 3 PO 4 crystals by using a strongly buffered, moderate‐temperature microprecipitation, and preserves the oxygen isotope composition of the initial tooth phosphate. The reproducibility of phosphate oxygen isotope compositions thus determined (measured as δ 18 O, V‐SMOW scale) is typically 0.2–0.3‰ (1 s.d.) on samples as small as 300 µg of enamel or dentine, a considerable improvement over available techniques for analyses of bioapatite phosphate oxygen. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.