How is carbon dating used to determine the age of animal and plant fossils?

It's also known as carbon-14 dating or radiocarbon dating. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon with a half-life of 5,730 years. It decays at a constant rate and can be used to determine the date of an organism's death by measuring the amount of radiocarbon that remains in the sample. The carbon-14 method was created in 1946 by American physicist Willard F. Libby.

Carbon dating is used to determine the age of animal and plant fossils by measuring the amount of carbon-14 present in the remains. Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope that is incorporated into living organisms through the process of photosynthesis or consumption of other organisms. When an organism dies, it stops taking in carbon-14, and the amount of carbon-14 in its tissues begins to decrease through radioactive decay. By measuring the remaining amount of carbon-14 in the fossil, scientists can calculate how long it has been since the organism died, providing an estimate of its age.