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Fossils, Rocks and Radioactive Clocks: How to date the ancient past

Elizabeth Clare Season 2 Episode 13

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Today on the BioAudio podcast, it's all about dating! (no not that kind). Have you ever wondered how we figure out when things happened way in the past? When a scientist says "it's 100 million years old..." just how did they figure it out?

Today I'm talking to Dr. Matthew Jones. He's a paleontologist at Arizona State University and his specialty is fossil mammals (though he admits he was a dinosaur kid). It's often his job to figure out just how old is this rock and he's going to tell us about the science of dating ancient things. Stratigraphy, radioactive clocks, iridium rain and a commit that slammed into the earth. Who knew dating was so risky. 

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