In 1946, Willard Libby proposed an innovative method for dating organic materials by measuring their content of carbon-14, a newly discovered radioactive isotope of carbon. Known as radiocarbon dating, this method provides objective age estimates for carbon-based objects that originated from living organisms.

Is Carbon-14 used to date organic materials?

Background: Radiocarbon dating of materials is a radiometric dating technique that uses the decay of carbon-14 (14C) to estimate the age of organic materials, such as paper and parchment.