Archaeologists and paleontologists trying to ascertain the age of bone, wood and charcoal from ancient sites have long employed a technique called carbon-14 dating. This dating game has its drawbacks: it requires the destruction of a sizable portion of the sample and cannot, without costly and time-consuming treatment, determine the age of any object more than about 40,000 years old. But a new method promises to overcome both obstacles. A team of researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Toronto and General lonex Corp. of Ipswich, Mass., is developing a way of dating objects that not only uses much...
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