3 ms·
Usually using radiometric dating. Carbon-14 has too short of a halflife (~5000 years) to be useful for fossils, but potassium-40 has a long enough halflife (~1
by osamagirl69 6y ago
Usually using radiometric dating.
Carbon-14 has too short of a halflife (~5000 years) to be useful for fossils, but potassium-40 has a long enough halflife (~1.2 billion years) that it can be used to date minerals going back to the formation of the earths crust--it has even been used to estimate when the moon was formed (4-5 billion years ago)!
- close04 6y agoRadiometric dating is also used on the layers around the fossil. In this case of the hydrocarbon deposit [0]. [0] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/308/5726/1293 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/308/5726/1293