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  • Geologists often need to know the age of material that they find. They use absolute dating methods, sometimes called numerical dating, to give rocks an actual date, or date range, in numbers of years. This is different to relative dating, which only puts geological events in time order.

    Radiometric dating

    Most absolute dates for rocks are obtained with radiometric methods. These use radioactive minerals in rocks as geological clocks.

    The atoms of some chemical elements have different forms, called isotopes. These break down over time in a process scientists call radioactive decay. Each original isotope, called the parent, gradually decays to form a new isotope, called the daughter. Each isotope is identified with what is called a ‘mass number’. When ‘parent’ uranium-238 decays, for example, it produces subatomic particles, energy and ‘daughter’ lead-206.

    Isotopes are important to geologists because each radioactive element decays at a constant rate, which is unique to that element. These rates of decay are known, so if you can measure the proportion of parent and daughter isotopes in rocks now, you can calculate when the rocks were formed.

    Because of their unique decay rates, different elements are used for dating different age ranges. For example, the decay of potassium-40 to argon-40 is used to date rocks older than 20,000 years, and the decay of uranium-238 to lead-206 is used for rocks older than 1 million years.

    Radiocarbon dating measures radioactive isotopes in once-living organic material instead of rock, using the decay of carbon-14 to nitrogen-14. Because of the fairly fast decay rate of carbon-14, it can only be used on material up to about 60,000 years old. Geologists use radiocarbon to date such materials as wood and pollen trapped in sediment, which indicates the date of the sediment itself.

    The table below shows characteristics of some common radiometric dating methods. Geologists choose a dating method that suits the materials available in their rocks. There are over 30 radiometric methods available.

    Dating method

    Material dated

    Age range dated

    Carbon-14 to nitrogen-14 (radiocarbon)

    Organic remains, archaeological artefacts

    Up to 60,000 years ago

    Luminescence

    Tephra, loess, lake sediments

    Up to 100,000 years ago

    Fission track

    Tephra

    10,000 to 400 million years ago

    Potassium-40 to argon-40

    Volcanic rocks

    20,000 to 4.5 billion years ago

    Uranium-238 to lead-206

    Volcanic rocks

    1 million to 4.5 billion years ago

    Measuring isotopes is particularly useful for dating igneous and some metamorphic rock, but not sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock is made of particles derived from other rocks, so measuring isotopes would date the original rock material, not the sediments they have ended up in. However, there are radiometric dating methods that can be used on sedimentary rock, including luminescence dating.

    All radiometric dating methods measure isotopes in some way. Most directly measure the amount of isotopes in rocks, using a mass spectrometer. Others measure the subatomic particles that are emitted as an isotope decays. Some measure the decay of isotopes more indirectly. For example, fission track dating measures the microscopic marks left in crystals by subatomic particles from decaying isotopes. Another example is luminescence dating, which measures the energy from radioactive decay that is trapped inside nearby crystals.

    Activity ideas

    Help your students understand more about dating methods with one of these activities below:

    Useful link

    Radiocarbon dating is not a static science – this 2020 article from Nature, Carbon dating, the archaeological workhorse, is getting a major reboot features New Zealand scientists.

      Published 20 May 2011 Referencing Hub articles
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