Radiocarbon dating is a method that provides objective age estimates for carbon-based materials that originated from living organisms. An age could be estimated by measuring the amount of carbon-14 present in the sample and comparing this against an internationally used reference standard.

How does radiocarbon dating tell the age of an object?

The less radioactivity a carbon-14 isotope emits, the older it is. And since animals and plants stop absorbing carbon-14 when they begin to decay, the radioactivity of the carbon-14 thats left behind reveals their age.