In a paper published this week in Science, geochemist Roland Mundil of the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC) and his colleagues at BGC and UC Berkeley report that uranium/lead (U/Pb) dating can be extremely accurate - to within 250,000 years - but only if the zircons from volcanic ash used in the analysis are

Is uranium dating absolute?

Most absolute dates for rocks are obtained with radiometric methods. These use radioactive minerals in rocks as geological clocks .Radiometric dating.Dating methodMaterial datedAge range datedUranium-238 to lead-206Volcanic rocks1 million to 4.5 billion years ago4 more rows•May 20, 2011

What are the limitations of uranium dating?

Radiometric dating is a very useful tool, but it does have limits: The material being dated must have measurable amounts of the parent and/or the daughter isotopes. Radiometric dating can be done on only some materials. It is not useful for determining the age of sedimentary rocks.

Why is uranium good for dating?

Since the exact rate at which uranium decays into lead is known, the current ratio of lead to uranium in a sample of the mineral can be used to reliably determine its age.