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LoginNot sure what you're looking for? Browse the A-Z index. Archaeologists have two main ways to tell the age of sites and artifacts. Relative dating tells how old something is in relation to other objects, but cannot provide a year or specific date of use. In contrast, absolute dating provides a specific calendar year for the occupation of a site. Relative dating considers how old artifacts and sites are, in comparison to other artifacts and sites. Stratigraphy and style are both used for relative dating. Although relative dating can tell us what is older or younger, it doesn't tell us exactly how old something is.
So, how do we know how old a fossil is? There are two main methods determining a fossils age, relative dating and absolute dating. Relative dating is used to determine a fossils approximate age by comparing it to similar rocks and fossils of known ages. Absolute dating is used to determine a precise age of a fossil by using radiometric dating to measure the decay of isotopes, either within the fossil or more often the rocks associated with it. Relative Dating The majority of the time fossils are dated using relative dating techniques. Using relative dating the fossil is compared to something for which an age is already known. For example if you have a fossil trilobite and it was found in the Wheeler Formation.
Actually none. Most fossils do not contain Carbon so Carbon 14 radiometric dating can not be used to date a fossil that does not contain Carbon. Carbon 14 has a half life of only 5, years.
Imagine someone telling you a story where all the important events happened in the wrong order. It might be confusing, or even make no sense at all. Being able to tell how old things are and put them in the right order is one of the most important skills archaeologists have. We call this skill dating because it is how we organize our discoveries in time, like dates on a calendar. Archaeologists use two kinds of dating methods: relative dating and absolute dating.
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