Monday, August 4, 2008

Fossils again

Two people have asked, "How do you know how old a fossil is?" You have to find out about Carbon Dating!

6 comments:

Joshie! said...

hi

here is something i found on a site called http://www.howstuffworks.com/

You probably have seen or read news stories about fascinating ancient artifacts. At an archaeological dig, a piece of wooden tool is unearthed and the archaeologist finds it to be 5,000 years old. A child mummy is found high in the Andes and the archaeologist says the child lived more than 2,000 years ago. How do scientists know how old an object or human remains are? What methods do they use and how do these methods work? In this article, we will examine the methods by which scientists use radioactivity to determine the age of objects, most notably carbon-14 dating.

Carbon-14 dating is a way of determining the age of certain archeological artifacts of a biological origin up to about 50,000 years old. It is used in dating things such as bone, cloth, wood and plant fibers that were created in the relatively recent past by human activities.

Anonymous said...

mum said i have to find out what it means after she had my interview

Anonymous said...

where can u find fossils?

Anonymous said...

i went on www.bbc.co.uk/history/excavations_
techniques/carbon_dating

Brooke.E. said...

www.bbc.co.uk/history/excavations_
techniques/carbon_dating

Anonymous said...

Great work Brooke. I hope people have a look at this site.