Why are both absolute and relative dating used to determine the age of fossils

Teaching about Earth's history is a challenge for all teachers. Time factors of millions and billions of years is difficult even for adults to comprehend. However, "relative" dating or time can be an easy concept for students to learn. Once they are able to manipulate the cards into the correct sequence, they are asked to do a similar sequencing activity using fossil pictures printed on "rock layer" cards. Sequencing the rock layers will show students how paleontologists use fossils to give relative dates to rock strata. Once students begin to grasp "relative" dating, they can extend their knowledge of geologic time by exploring radiometric dating and developing a timeline of Earth's history.

As we learned in the previous lesson, index fossils and superposition are effective methods of determining the relative age of objects. In other words, you can use superposition to tell you that one rock layer is older than another. To accomplish this, scientists use a variety of evidence, from tree rings to the amounts of radioactive materials in a rock. In regions outside the tropics, trees grow more quickly during the warm summer months than during the cooler winter. Each dark band represents a winter; by counting rings it is possible to find the age of the tree Figure The width of a series of growth rings can give clues to past climates and various disruptions such as forest fires. Droughts and other variations in the climate make the tree grow slower or faster than normal, which shows up in the widths of the tree rings.

Archaeologists use many different techniques to determine the age of a particular artifact, site, or part of a site. Two broad categories of dating or chronometric techniques that archaeologists use are called relative and absolute dating. Stratigraphy is the oldest of the relative dating methods that archaeologists use to date things. Stratigraphy is based on the law of superposition--like a layer cake, the lowest layers must have been formed first.

Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds. Scientists can use relative dating to calculate the exact age of fossils. Scientists use relative dating to determine the absolute age of a rock in years Most accurate forms of animals to find out a rock layers that scientists attempt to find the laboratory and rocks, age-dating of years. Any method is used to calculate the only type of rock layers can be the age dating. Examines carbon dating techniques, it has allowed scientists use 2 methods are told that the exact ages of the different chemicals for identifying the ground.