I have collected some dolerite samples from Proterozoic sedimentary sequence. I want to know about the sample preparation techniques of isotope dating of dolerite.
I'm not sure about dolerite, but with mollusk shells/corals and soils that I have prepared for isotope work we would for the shells/coral we would drill out tiny sections and collect the dust, which would be weighed in tin capsules and sent off to an isotope laboratory for analysis. Every laboratory will have weight standards that they want depending on the suspected isotopic level (if it is above a natural abundance). Soils would just be pulverized and weighed in the capsules. Basically you need to turn your sample into a fine powder so it can be well homogenized. However, I think there have been some more recent techniques with x-ray that can determine isotope signatures of whole samples, though I don't know much about that. The dating would involve correlation to known sequences of isotope signatures.