A Note Concerning “Location-Dependent Differences in the 14C Content of Wood” by McCormac et al.
Paul E. Damon · Radiocarbon · 1995
I have read with interer .hedetailed paper by McCormac et al. (1995) in which they suggest that the shift in the Belfast calibration data of ca.18 yr toward older dates may not be valid (Pearson and Qua 1993).They also document "evidence for small location-dependent 14C differences".In the process, they also rediscover a North American marine west coast effect that, as a reviewer of their first draft, I had pointed out to them but that they chose not to acknowledge.Specifically, we find no difference between our measurements on west coast samples (sequoia and bristlecone pine) and Seattle measurements on west coast Douglas-fir and bristlecone pine (Kahn et al. 1995;Linick et al. 1986).However, we found a significant time-dependent difference between our data (Damon, Cheng and Linick 1989) for Douglas-fir from the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson (32°26'N, 110°47'W; elev.2740 m) and Douglas-fir from the Olympic Peninsula reported by Stuiver and Quay