Intermediate resolution spectroscopy from the ESO Very Large Telescope is analysed for 63 photometrically selected low-mass ( 0.08-0.30 M _ { \odot } ) candidates of the open cluster NGC 2547 .
We have confirmed membership for most of these stars using radial velocities , and found that lithium remains undepleted for cluster stars with I > 17.54 \pm 0.14 and K _ { s } > 14.86 \pm 0.12 .
From these results , several pre-main-sequence evolutionary models give almost model independent ages of 34-36 Myr , with a precision of 10 per cent .
These ages are only slightly larger than the ages of 25-35 ( \pm 5 ) Myr obtained using the same models to fit isochrones to higher mass stars descending towards the zero age main sequence ( ZAMS ) , both in empirically calibrated and theoretical colour-magnitude diagrams .
This agreement between age determinations in different mass ranges is an excellent test of the current generation of low-mass pre-main sequence stellar models and lends confidence to ages determined with either method between 30 and 120 Myr .