For decades, scientists have relied on tree rings to estimate how long trees can live. But new research suggests that this widely used method may have been underestimating the lifespan of many ...

Dedicated at the University of Chicago on October 10, 2016. In 1946, Willard Libby proposed an innovative method for dating organic materials by measuring their content of carbon-14, a newly ...

The 2009 discovery of footprints (human and animal) left behind in layers of clay and silt at New Mexico’s White Sands National Park sparked a contentious debate about when, exactly, human cultures ...

One of the more significant challenges archaeologists deal with while investigating any archaeological site is determining how old it is. At sites with historic materials, items such as bottles, jars, ...

When a researcher picks up an object — whether it’s a scrap of leather from a dig site, a fossil from a museum drawer or a newly fallen meteorite — their first question might be, “What is this thing?” ...

Radiocarbon dating is set to become more accurate than ever after an international team of scientists improved the technique for assessing the age of historical objects. Radiocarbon dating is set to ...