First developed in the late 1940s at the University of Chicago by Willard Libby, the technique is based on the decay of the carbon-14 isotope. Radiocarbon dating has been used for historical studies ...

This is now the most widely used method of age estimation in the field of archaeology ... isotopes. Carbon has three main isotopes. They are carbon-12, carbon-13 and carbon-14.

Martin Kamen, the scientist who co-discovered the radioactive isotope carbon-14, died on 31 August at his home in Santa Barbara, California. He was 89 years old. Kamen discovered carbon-14 in 1940 in ...

When they die, the carbon-14 starts to change into other atoms over time ... The breakthrough introduced a new scientific rigor to archaeology, allowing scholars to piece together a history of humans ...