How to tell how long a vestige

The method is the most carbon-14 dating used for organic archaeological remains.

It basa on the idea that the C14 isotope, which remains constant in all living beings, is radioactive, that is to be decomposing and transforming nitrogen when life ceases.
As we know how fast you do, seeing the amount of C14 remaining in a vestige organic-human, animal or plant-we can calculate the time elapsed since died. It is very effective with traces of less than 50,000 years old.

To date oldest rocks or objects were often resort to the method of potassium-argon, which applies to antiques of between 50,000 and 5 million years.
It basa that the potassium present in volcanic rocks and lava becomes argon through a natural process radioactive. As its speed disintegration is known, if we measure the amount of argon in a rest this fossil we can know their age.

From this method, scientists have perfected another even more precise when it comes to estimating the age objects to several hundred million years old. This is the system argon-argon, for which the sample is taken to analyse and is irradiated within a nuclear reactor to convert part of argon in a different isotope of that gas.