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Eduncle posted an MCQ
December 28, 2019 • 17:22 pm 0 points
  • CSIR NET
  • Life Sciences

A group of palaeontologists digging in an area discovers a pre-historic human burial site. The same group, while exploring a nearby area, discovered fossil remains of what appeared to be more than 100 million year old dinosaur bones. Which of the following combinations of modern radiometric dating techniques should they use to calculate the age of these fossils most accurately ?

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    Eduncle Best Answer

    The most widely known form of radiometric dating is carbon-14 dating, used to determine the age of human-made artifacts and remains. But carbon-14 dating won’t work on dinosaur bones. The half-life of carbon-14 is only 5,730 years, so carbon-14 dating is only effective on samples that are less than 50,000 years old. Dinosaur bones, on the other hand, are millions of years old-some fossils are billions of years old. To determine the ages of these specimens, scientists need an isotope with a very long half-life. Some of the isotopes used for this purpose are uranium-238, uranium-235 and  potassium-40, each of which has a half-life of more than a million years.

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