Determination of Lanthanides in Fossil Samples Using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy

As being a fast, simple and relatively non-destructive analytical technique Laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) has a large variety of applications including the analysis of paleontological samples. In this work LIBS is employed for the quantitative determination of lanthanides (Ce, Dy, Er, Eu, Gd, Ho, La, Lu, Nd, Sm, Tb, Tm and Yb) in vertebrate fossil samples comprising teeth, disarticulated complete or fragmented bones, eggshell fragments, and coprolites of dinosaurs, mammals and crocodiles. For emission line data, standard AnalaR grade salts of lanthanides were used. The major components: iron, calcium, magnesium, silicon and aluminum in the samples were also determined. The analytical information may be helpful in studying the samples for their age, formation environment and other paleontological properties.