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Potassium–argon dating, abbreviated K–Ar dating, is a radiometric dating method used in geochronology and archaeology. It is based on the measurement of the product of the radioactive decay of an isotope of potassium (K) into argon (Ar). Potassium is a common element in many materials, such as feldspars, micas, clay minerals, tephra, and ...
Argon–argon (or 40 Ar/ 39 Ar) dating is a radiometric dating method invented to supersede potassium–argon (K/Ar) dating in accuracy. The older method required splitting samples into two for separate potassium and argon measurements, while the newer method requires only one rock fragment or mineral grain and uses a single measurement of argon isotopes.
Other radiometric dating techniques are available for earlier periods. One of the most widely used is potassium–argon dating (K–Ar dating). Potassium-40 is a radioactive isotope of potassium that decays into argon-40. The half-life of potassium-40 is 1.3 billion years, far longer than that of carbon-14, allowing much older samples to be dated.
Rubidium-strontium dating is not as precise as the uranium–lead method, with errors of 30 to 50 million years for a 3-billion-year-old sample. Application of in situ analysis (Laser-Ablation ICP-MS) within single mineral grains in faults have shown that the Rb-Sr method can be used to decipher episodes of fault movement.
A sample in which the mineral grains have all been exposed to sufficient daylight (seconds for quartz; hundreds of seconds for potassium feldspar) can be said to be of zero age; when excited it will not emit any such photons. The older the sample is, the more light it emits, up to a saturation limit.
Potassium–argon dating and argon–argon dating. These techniques date metamorphic, igneous and volcanic rocks. They are also used to date volcanic ash layers within or overlying paleoanthropologic sites. The younger limit of the argon–argon method is a few thousand years. Electron spin resonance (ESR) dating
Several dating methods exist, depending on different criteria and techniques, and some very well known examples of disciplines using such techniques are, for example, history, archaeology, geology, paleontology, astronomy and even forensic science, since in the latter it is sometimes necessary to investigate the moment in the past during which ...
Two dating techniques were used to arrive at the approximate age of the beds that make up the ground layers at Laetoli: potassium-argon dating and analysis of stratigraphy. Based on these methods, the layers have been named as follows, starting with the deepest: Lower Laetolil Beds, Upper Laetolil Beds, Lower Ndolanya Beds, Upper Ndolanya Beds ...