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Radiocarbon Dating And Reconstructing The Evolution Of Modern Humans

850 Words4 Pages

The earth is dated to be around 4.6 billion years old and the existence of life is at least 3.5 billion years. In order to understand our history of life and primate and human evolution, it is vital to place each fossil in chronological sequence and know how old it is. There are several methods that scientists may use to get a direct date of fossilized remains which are radiocarbon, U-series, electron spin resonance, and amino acid racemization. These dating techniques are essential for understanding and reconstructing the evolution of modern humans. In this essay I will introduce the different methods for dating human remains. Radiocarbon dating is one of the most established and widely applied dating techniques in research. This method of dating was introduced in the late 1940s by W.F. Libby and uses the element carbon. Three naturally occurring isotopes of carbon are : 12C, 13C, and 14C. The basics of radiocarbon dating is measuring the ratio of 14C to 12C to result in a date for the material. According to the physical anthropology journal, the cosmic rays interact with atoms in the atmosphere which may interact with 14N and creates the radioactive isotope 14C and oxidizes into 14CO2 …show more content…

This method is measured quantitatively “with a range of chromatographically methods, such as ion-exchange, high-pressure liquid chromatography, gas chromatography and more recently reversed phase liquid chromatography” (Grun, 2006). This allows the analysis of a large number of samples within a short time and is inexpensive. Based on age-dependent, non-enzymatic changes of L-form amino acid to D-form amino acids, amino acid racemization is considered to be a reliable and accurate dating method (Kumar, 2008). According to Kumar (2008) there are age-related changes that occur in proteins and racemization correlates highly with protein

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