Example: wood found in a grave of known age by historically reliable documents is the standard for that time for the C14 content.

This standard content of C14 can then be used for wood not associated with a historically documented date.

Some believe trees are known to be as old as 9,000 years. A lot of people doubt this claim for various good reasons I wont go into here.

What would happen if a dinosaur bone were carbon dated?

- At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Scientists dated dinosaur bones using the Carbon dating method.

The older a sample is, the less (the period of time after which half of a given sample will have decayed) is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that can be reliably measured by this process date to around 50,000 years ago, although special preparation methods occasionally permit accurate analysis of older samples.

The idea behind radiocarbon dating is straightforward, but years of work were required to develop the technique to the point where accurate dates could be obtained.