GENERAL GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Radiocarbon dating is a method that provides objective age estimates for carbon-based materials that originated from living organisms. An age could be estimated by measuring the amount of carbon-14 present in the sample and comparing this against an internationally used reference standard.

Detailed explanation-2: -The basis of radiocarbon dating is simple: all living things absorb carbon from the atmosphere and food sources around them, including a certain amount of natural, radioactive carbon-14. When the plant or animal dies, they stop absorbing, but the radioactive carbon that they’ve accumulated continues to decay.

Detailed explanation-3: -Similarly, 11460 years after an organism dies, only one quarter of its original carbon-14 atoms are still around. Because of the short length of the carbon-14 half-life, carbon dating is only accurate for items that are thousands to tens of thousands of years old.

Detailed explanation-4: -Carbon dating is used to work out the age of organic material-in effect, any living thing. The technique hinges on carbon-14, a radioactive isotope of the element that, unlike other more stable forms of carbon, decays away at a steady rate.

Detailed explanation-5: -carbon-14 dating, also called radiocarbon dating, method of age determination that depends upon the decay to nitrogen of radiocarbon (carbon-14).