Dating Tips and Advice

What dating method do they use to determine the age of really old fossils?

southeastside asked:


There was news yesterday of 3.3 million fossils of Australopithecus afarensis from Ethiopia in the years. I 'm just curious as to how to verify age. I know it 'carbon-14 dating of s not, that' s 2 orders of magnitude beyond its range. It 's been a while since I learned about this subject, so thanks to restore my memory.

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Tags: Australopithecus Afarensis, Carbon 14, Fossil, Fossils, Memory, Orders Of Magnitude

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 12:45 am and is filed under Earth Sciences & Geology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “What dating method do they use to determine the age of really old fossils?”

1. Steve says:

   April 30, 2009 at 11:32 am

   The site I use is match.com The old fossils don’t have a picture there.
2. yscrk says:

   May 1, 2009 at 3:53 pm

   Sending the Old fossil on a date with a Blonde, Brunette and a red head - he may react to one of them
3. tbom_01 says:

   May 2, 2009 at 8:51 pm

   Looks like there’s aluminum, chlorine, calcium & iodine dating…
4. Corey M says:

   May 3, 2009 at 7:53 pm

   radioactive dating, using certian elements such as carbon-14, scientists are able to figure out how old a fossil was
5. Roy says:

   May 5, 2009 at 9:22 pm

   They measure the decay of other radioactive elements, not carbon. The half life of carbon 14 is only 15,000 years or so. For anything older than that they measure for example, how uranium decays into lead. The article below may help.
6. bootleg says:

   May 6, 2009 at 3:36 pm

   check it out on