3 ms·
Radiocarbon dating wouldn't be affected by meal frequency, unless I'm missing something. It's just identifying the oldest material in the specimen.
by bpodgursky 7y ago
Radiocarbon dating wouldn't be affected by meal frequency, unless I'm missing something. It's just identifying the oldest material in the specimen.
- pvaldes 7y agoWe have two main different ways to attack the problem of age, and both have issues > But as scientists know the rate at which this isotope decays, it is a very useful marker in determining age... The older the creature, the less Carbon-14 you'd expect to find. They are registering decay in the level of carbon-14. The clock is adjusted for bone (storing this isotope as a more or less permanent crystalline mix of carbone and calcium). This is cartilage. And teeth in sharks last only for some period ranging between, lets say, two weeks and two years (100 days for a white shark or so). Somewhere inside this period, those pieces storing carbon-14 will fall and will need to be replaced in a few days. If the reserves are mobilised from vertebra to tooth, then you would expect to find much less carbon-14 than usual. Therefore you could conclude than the fish is much older than it really is. Counting the number and type of rings on vertebra is a different problem, and is affected by fasting and starving periods.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]