Estimating event rates in the presence of dating error with an application to lunar impacts

Radiometric ages of objects are often used to reconstruct historical variations in the rate function of geological events. Measurement error in such ages can lead to a bias in the estimated rate function. This paper describes a method for estimating the historical rate function that accounts for measurement error. The method is applied to the estimation of the rate of lunar impacts over the past 3.5 billion years from the argon–argon ages of 155 impact spherules. A simulation study of the performance of the method is also presented.