Geochronometer
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Any of several techniques used to measure the age of rock, especially any technique of radiometric dating, the measuring of the relative abundance of particular radioactive or radiogenic isotopes in order to evaluate the progress of radioactive decay.
"Application of the K-Ca geochronometer therefore is best suited to minerals with high K/Ca ratios (Marshall & DePaolo, 1982) and K-bearing clay materials might appear to be amenable to its use."
- 2 Any of several crystalline minerals that remain stable over geologic time and that when formed contained radioisotopes whose abundance relative to their decay products can be measured to calculate the age of the crystal (and thus that of the surrounding rock).
"K-bearing minerals such as biotite, sanidine, plagioclase, and hornblende are geochronometers representative of the time of their crystallization once they were erupted from a volcano, and then transported into marine sedimentary basins."
Example
More examples"Application of the K-Ca geochronometer therefore is best suited to minerals with high K/Ca ratios (Marshall & DePaolo, 1982) and K-bearing clay materials might appear to be amenable to its use."
Etymology
From geo- + chronometer.
More for "geochronometer"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.