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.

Can carbon dating be done on non living things?

Physicist: It doesnt. Carbon dating is the most famous form of “radiometric dating”. Carbon-14 is continuously generated in the upper atmosphere when stray neutrons bombard atmospheric nitrogen (which is what most of the atmosphere is).

Could you use carbon dating to determine how old a living creature is?

Carbon-14 dating can determine the age of an artifact that is up to 40,000 years old. Living organisms absorb carbon my eating and breathing. After burning a small piece of an artifact, scientists compare the amount of Carbon-14 to the amount of Carbon-12 to determine the age of the object.