Comment on: “Experimental evidence for the pressure dependence of fission track annealing in apatite” by A.S. Wendt et al. [Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 201 (2002) 593–607]

The pressure experiments reported by Wendt et al. are cast in such a way as to question the fundamental basis underpinning apatite fission track thermochronology, implying the possibility of a large systematic error in previous interpretations. We find however, that the study is severely compromised by fundamental errors in both experimental design and execution, as well as lacking in consideration of a substantial body of previous work in the area of fission track annealing studies. Wendt et al. have not attempted to extrapolate the results of their experiments to geologically relevant heating times and temperatures. This has been the fundamental test that all previous annealing models have had to pass. Their study clearly fails this test. Moreover, if significant pressure dependence does exist then it is implicit in existing, deep borehole-consistent annealing models. Whilst such models are interpolated in terms of temperature, the borehole test means that they also accommodate any other factors, which correlate with temperature, including pressure. The implications of the results reported by Wendt et al. have been overstated. Far from being “intimidating”, we find that they have little relevance either to previous studies of apatite fission track annealing and extrapolations based on them, or to the routine application of fission track analysis to elucidate thermal history information under geological conditions.