Lucia Capra, Claus Siebe, Jose Luis Macias, and Juan Manuel Espindola

摘要

The comment by Capra et al. focuses on the reliability of apublished ~(14)C charcoal date (Capra et al., 1998) as an estimate for the age of the La Virgen eruption of Las Tres Virgenes volcano, Baja California. In our recent study (Schmitt et al., 2006), we utilized (U-Th)/He dating of zircon extracted from La Virgen pumice to date the eruption. The resulting age (36 ± 3 ka; 1σ) exceeds the Capra et al. (1998) ~(14)C age of 6515 ± 75 yr BP by ～30,000 yr. We welcome the comment by Capra et al. as an opportunity to discuss this discrepancy and acknowledge the additional information on the sample location of the dated charcoal that they provide. Nevertheless, we fail to see how this information bolsters the reliability of their original ~(14)C charcoal age. We applaud the fine work of Lucia Capra, Claus Siebe, Jose Luis Macias, and Juan Manuel Espindola. Our goal is in no way to diminish their valuable contributions, but rather to add information and alternate conclusions on the age of the La Virgen plinian tephra deposit at Las Tres Virgenes volcano.