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RADIOCARBON DATING
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Dictionary entry overview: What does radiocarbon dating mean?
• RADIOCARBON DATING (noun)
The noun RADIOCARBON DATING has 1 sense:
1. a chemical analysis used to determine the age of organic materials based on their content of the radioisotope carbon 14; believed to be reliable up to 40,000 years
Familiarity information: RADIOCARBON DATING used as a noun is very rare.
Dictionary entry details
Sense 1
Meaning:
A chemical analysis used to determine the age of organic materials based on their content of the radioisotope carbon 14; believed to be reliable up to 40,000 years
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Synonyms:
carbon-14 dating; carbon dating; radiocarbon dating
Hypernyms ("radiocarbon dating" is a kind of...):
dating; geological dating (use of chemical analysis to estimate the age of geological specimens)
Context examples
The second line of research has used radiocarbon dating to analyze the age at which 44 individuals died.
(The necropolis of El Barranquete in Níjar (Almería), proven to have been used for funerary rituals throughout the Bronze Age, University of Granada)
Radiocarbon dating of minute leaf and wood fragments preserved in the cave's ice indicates that its glacier is at least 10,500 years old, making it the oldest cave glacier in the world and one of the oldest glaciers on Earth outside the polar regions.
(Ice cave in Transylvania yields window into region's past, NSF)
Using published data from the circumpolar Arctic, their own new field observations of Siberian permafrost and thermokarsts, radiocarbon dating, atmospheric modeling and spatial analyses, the research team studied how thawing permafrost is affecting climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.
(Certain Arctic lakes store more greenhouse gases than they release, NSF)
One of the researchers, Gonzalo Aranda, explains that this re‑inspection has been focused on characterizing the population buried at that site from their anthropological and biochemical study, as well as from the analysis of the chronology and temporality of this cultural phenomenon through the radiocarbon dating of their funerary activities.
(The necropolis of El Barranquete in Níjar (Almería), proven to have been used for funerary rituals throughout the Bronze Age, University of Granada)
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