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Living things absorb a radioactive isotope that decays at a known rate after death. The figure is taken from Nobel Prize, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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Yes. It sits on the History shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Carbon dating gave archaeology an absolute clock

Living things absorb a radioactive isotope that decays at a known rate after death Willard Libby developed radiocarbon dating in the late 1940s and won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Plants take up carbon fourteen while alive, and the isotope decays at a fixed rate once the organism dies, so measuring what remains gives an age. The method works on organic material up to about fifty thousand years old. It sits in Mondo's history collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Nobel Prize

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Carbon-14 decay allows dating of ancient organic remainsMeasuring residual radioactive carbon-14 yields ages for organic items up to 50,000 years Tree rings can date timber to the exact yearDendrochronology matches growth patterns to build calendars stretching back millennia Coins give archaeologists a firm date for a layerA ruler's portrait and mint marks tie a deposit to a short span of years Lidar revealed whole cities under jungle canopyLaser scanning from aircraft mapped ruins that ground surveys had walked past Aerial photography exposed fields nobody had noticedCrop marks and shadows in low sunlight revealed ditches under farmland The Great Pyramid of Giza was built for Pharaoh KhufuOver two million limestone blocks were assembled to form the tallest structure for millennia

Tags: radiocarbon, archaeology, dating

Carbon dating gave archaeology an absolute clock: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Living things absorb a radioactive isotope that decays at a known rate after death. The figure is taken from Nobel Prize, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a history fact?: Yes. It sits on the History shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.