Carbon dating is used by archeologists to date trees, plants, and animal remains; as well as human artifacts made from wood and leather; because these items are generally younger than 50,000 years.

Is carbon dating useful for dating rocks?

Thus, radiocarbon dating is only useful for measuring things that were formed in the relatively recent geologic past. Luckily, there are methods, such as the commonly used potassium-argon (K-Ar) method, that allows dating of materials that are beyond the limit of radiocarbon dating (Table 1).

Is carbon dating only for living things?

Carbon dating is used to work out the age of organic material — in effect, any living thing. As a rule, carbon dates are younger than calendar dates: a bone carbon-dated to 10,000 years is around 11,000 years old, and 20,000 carbon years roughly equates to 24,000 calendar years.