Final answer:
Carbon dating relies on the decay of carbon-14 and is useful for dating materials up to about 50,000 years old. It is not suitable for dating dinosaur fossils because they are much older, and other dating methods are required for these ancient fossils.
Step-by-step explanation:
Carbon-14 (14C) dating, which relies on the radioactive decay of carbon-14 to nitrogen-14, is a method used to determine the age of objects that were part of a living organism. However, carbon dating has a practical limitation: it is accurate for substances up to about 50,000 years old, making it unsuitable for dating most dinosaur fossils, which are much older. For fossils beyond the range of carbon-14 dating, other methods such as potassium-argon dating are used.
Plants absorb 14C from the atmosphere and animals ingest these plants, incorporating the same ratio of 14C as found in the environment. Once the organism dies, the ingestion stops, and the 14C starts to decay with a half-life of 5,730 years. Radiocarbon dating can therefore determine the time elapsed since death but is most accurate for younger samples due to the greater abundance of 14C.
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