carbon-14 dating
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- Chemistry LibreTexts Library - Radiocarbon Dating
- Frontiers - Radiocarbon dating and its applications in Chinese archeology: An overview
- American Institute of Physics - Uses of Radiocarbon Dating
- The Conservation - Explainer: what is radiocarbon dating and how does it work?
- American Chemical Society - Willard Libby and Radiocarbon Dating
- Australian National University - Research School of Earth Sciences - Radiocarbon dating: background
- Science Learning Hub - C-14 carbon dating process
- National Geographic - Culture - How radiocarbon dating helps archaeologists date objects and sites, with carbon-14
- Biblical Archaeology Society - What is Radiocarbon Dating?
- University of Chicago News - Carbon-14 dating, explained
- Khan Academy - Carbon 14 dating 1
carbon-14 dating, method of age determination that depends upon the decay to nitrogen of radiocarbon (carbon-14). Carbon-14 is continually formed in nature by the interaction of neutrons with nitrogen-14 in the Earth’s atmosphere; the neutrons required for this reaction are produced by cosmic rays interacting with the atmosphere.
Radiocarbon present in molecules of atmospheric carbon dioxide enters the biological carbon cycle: it is absorbed from the air by green plants and then passed on to animals through the food chain. Radiocarbon decays slowly in a living organism, and the amount lost is continually replenished as long as the organism takes in air or food. Once the organism dies, however, it ceases to absorb carbon-14, so that the amount of the radiocarbon in its tissues steadily decreases. Carbon-14 has a half-life of 5,730 ± 40 years—i.e., half the amount of the radioisotope present at any given time will undergo spontaneous disintegration during the succeeding 5,730 years. Because carbon-14 decays at this constant rate, an estimate of the date at which an organism died can be made by measuring the amount of its residual radiocarbon.
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The carbon-14 method was developed by the American physicist Willard F. Libby about 1946. It has proved to be a versatile technique of dating fossils and archaeological specimens from 500 to 50,000 years old. The method is widely used by Pleistocene geologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and investigators in related fields.