Question

Dinosaur fossils are too old to be reliably dated using carbon-14, which has a half-life of about 5730 years. Suppose we had a 69 million year old dinosaur fossil. How much of the living dinosaur's 14C would be remaining today? (Round your answer to five decimal places.)

Answer 1

For a 69 million year old dinosaur fossil, essentially no measurable amount of the living dinosaur's 14C would be remaining today.

Step-by-step explanation:

The half-life of carbon-14 (14C) is 5730 years, which means that after this time, only half of the original 14C concentration will remain. For a 69 million year old dinosaur fossil, we can calculate how much 14C would be remaining today using the half-life. Since the half-life is much shorter than the age of the fossil, the amount of 14C remaining would be extremely small, approaching zero. Therefore, we can estimate that essentially no measurable amount of the living dinosaur's 14C would be remaining today.