
Radiocarbon Dating What is carbon dating 14 the amount of 14 C in a sample from a dead plant or animal such as a piece of wood or a fragment of bone provides information that can be used to calculate when the animal or plant died. Deep time Geological history of Earth Geological time units. You have successfully emailed this. Poole In the laboratory, samples must be processed and cleaned so that there is no material on them that might throw off the age reading. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Factories put out massive amounts of Carbon, and during that time the concentration of Carbon in the atmosphere increased significantly. This led to estimates that the trees were between 24, and 19, years old, [82] and hence this was taken to be the date of the last advance of the Wisconsin glaciation before its final retreat marked the end of the Pleistocene in North America.
Keep Exploring Britannica Education. It provides more accurate dating within sites than previous methods, which usually derived either from stratigraphy or from typologies e.