Uses of uranium lead dating

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As each dating method was developed, tested, and improved, mainly since , a vast body of knowledge about the behaviour of different isotopic systems under different geologic conditions has evolved.

The half-life of carbon-14 is only 5, 730 years so this method is mainly used for dating things from the last 50,000 years Two major dating methods applied to artifacts and fossils are stratagraphic dating (based upon the particular layer of rock of sediment in which the object is found) or radiometric dating (which is based on the decay rates of certain radioactive isotopes).

The type of radiometric dating used depends greatly on the approximate time period you are studying and so varies depending on if the material you are studying is an artifact or a fossil. Radiometric dating is the term for a method to determine the age of an object based on the concentration of a particular radioactive isotope contained within it.

Carbon 14 is used for fossils of fairly recent origin, as it becomes less and less accurate beyond 10 half lives (about 50 thousand years). Longer lived isotopes such as uranium/uranium, uranium/thorium, and potassium/argon are used to date inorganic materials of volcanic origin, such as rock or layers of volcanic ash, and can yield results ranging from millions to billions of years, accurate to within about a hundred thousand years.

Unlike any other method, uranium-lead has a natural cross-check built into it that shows when nature has tampered with the evidence.

Uranium comes in two common isotopes with atomic weights of and we'll call them U and U.

Radiometric dating (often called radioactive dating) is a technique used to date materials, usually based on a comparison between the observed abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope and its decay products, using known decay rates.

CARBON DATING The most common fossil dating techniques are radiometric dating techniques.