Pompeii eruption’s date refined to improve volcano risk assessment
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Scientists in Italy and the United States improved the dating of Mount Vesuvius’s eruption that destroyed Pompeii, refining a technique used to assess risk from volcanoes worldwide.
In 1998, Andrea Marzoli of the University of Padua collected pumice samples from Oplontis, a suburb of Pompeii, that came from the earliest stage of the eruption. These samples sat unused until graduate students suggested reanalyzing them with updated argon-argon dating methods.
Argon-argon dating determines the age of volcanic materials by measuring isotopes of argon within them. The team validated the eruption date using the historical account written by Pliny the Younger, confirming it to within two months of August 24, 79 CE. They analyzed eight samples of sanidine, a potassium-containing mineral from Vesuvius, and achieved a precision of 0.7 percent and accuracy of 0.4 percent in their dating.
This more precise dating will help calibrate radiocarbon dating, a common method for materials younger than 55,000 years old, and improve understanding of volcanic activity at sites like Mexico City, Naples, and Yogyakarta. Paul Renne of the University of California, Berkeley, explained that improved dating helps establish connections between events in the geologic record, like asteroid impacts and mass extinctions.
