Tom: What radiometric dating techniques are used to date human fossils?
I am already aware of Carbon-14 Dating. What are the dating techniques available for dating human fossils that are older than 50,000 years?
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Answer by Mark V
Actually, radiocarbon dating is accurate out to about 60,000 years, 75,000 for scientists who really push it (they push it because the C-14 margin of error is very small). Archaeologists consider it good enough to be considered an absolute dating technique due to the a fore mentioned reasonably small margin of error.
Still, the earliest known fossils of modern humans are about 200,000 years old. Hominid fossils, representing ancestral human species, are even older. In the cases of the 200,000 old fossils, potassium-argon radiometric dating is used.
Finally, genetic investigations are used to follow the development of our ancestral hominid species, though this genetic data can be very difficult to come by.
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