Three Populous Clusters Discovered in the Large Magellanic Cloud Age Gap

In the process of searching the Hubble Space T elescope archive, we have serendipitously discovered three populous Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) clusters with ages that place them in the LMC "" age gap.ÏÏ These clustersÈNGC 2155, SL 663, and NGC 2121Èturn out to have [Fe/H] D [1.0 and ages of D4 Gyr.This puts them in the "" age gap ÏÏ between the intermediate-age LMC clusters, the oldest of which are D2.5 Gyr old, and ESO 121-SC03, which has an age of D9 Gyr.The addition of these three clusters to the LMC age-metallicity relation has reduced the discrepancy between the age distribution of the LMC clusters and the Ðeld stars.Furthermore, it indicates that searches to Ðnd more clusters older than D2.5 Gyr in the LMC are crucial to a better understanding of its global star formation history.