How to Use radiocarbon in a Sentence

radiocarbon

noun
  • Their search began five years ago with a single radiocarbon clue from the ocean floor.
    — Lisa Wells, Harper’s Magazine , 13 Mar. 2023
  • This means the radiocarbon levels have been declining for years.
    — Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 27 June 2022
  • The team also used radiocarbon and genetic methods to date the bone.
    — Ann Gibbons, Science | AAAS, 5 Oct. 2017
  • Topping found few of these orbs below the soil layer with the errant radiocarbon dates, and few after.
    — Zach St. George, New York Times, 5 Mar. 2024
  • Part of our job was to see if each of the 2,500 radiocarbon dates available would meet today’s standards.
    — Jessica Stone, The Conversation, 29 Sep. 2020
  • Lesnek and her colleagues used the latest research to account for the effect of marine diets on radiocarbon.
    — Lizzie Wade, Science | AAAS, 30 May 2018
  • They’ll be sampled for radiocarbon dating and to look for sterols, pollen, and other microscopic traces of past landscapes.
    — K.n. Smith, Ars Technica, 6 Aug. 2017
  • The mummy has not yet been subjected to radiocarbon dating to determine its age, Aguilar said.
    — Franklin BriceÑo, USA TODAY, 16 June 2023
  • Since the 1950s researchers have known that the concentration of radiocarbon in tree rings varies over time.
    — Katherine Kornei, Scientific American, 6 Mar. 2023
  • Dostal said radiocarbon dating of the wooden stoppers placed them roughly in the late 1700s.
    — CBS News, 4 June 2026
  • The difference in the ages of the accretions supported the radiocarbon dating of the layers of paint.
    — Julian Dossett, Space.com, 28 Nov. 2025
  • Tree ring experts now know that large solar flares left evident traces on tree rings, which can be seen in a rapid increase of carbon-14, or radiocarbon, in the wood.
    — Joshua Rapp Learn, Discover Magazine, 2 Dec. 2021
  • As a result, the radiocarbon made its way into the plants, the animals, and eventually humans.
    — Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 27 June 2022
  • The work confirms a 2021 study’s findings, which were based on radiocarbon dates from aquatic plant seeds in the sediments.
    — Tom Metcalfe, Scientific American, 5 Oct. 2023
  • In recent years it has been discovered that massive solar storms can cause radiocarbon levels in the atmosphere to spike, Dee said.
    — Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, 20 Oct. 2021
  • Douglas and his colleagues compared the radiocarbon age of the plant waxes in each layer of sediment to the age of tiny plant fossils that had washed into the lake at the same time.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 22 Aug. 2018
  • Further, cells that formed within that period would have had higher amounts of radiocarbon in the DNA.
    — Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 27 June 2022
  • At the same time, the Economist notes, radiocarbon testing is so destructive that a sample can rarely be analyzed twice.
    — Meilan Solly, Smithsonian, 7 June 2019
  • The team used radiocarbon dating of organic carbon in the paintings, as carbon isotopes in organic matter break down over time.
    — Julian Dossett, Space.com, 28 Nov. 2025
  • To the best of their knowledge, the latest radiocarbon dates are the first chronometric age determinations for Malaysian rock art.
    — Laura Baisas, Popular Science, 23 Aug. 2023
  • White sharks are slow to grow and mature; radiocarbon analysis of their cartilage suggests the largest specimens might be as old as 70 years.
    — New York Times, 20 Oct. 2021
  • To find out, Des Lauriers will have to wait until the team excavates and takes samples for radiocarbon dating.
    — Lizzie Wade, Science | AAAS, 10 Aug. 2017
  • As such, any samples treated with PEG would skew the results of radiocarbon dating studies.
    — Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 July 2024
  • By measuring how much radiocarbon had accumulated in those proteins, researchers could estimate how long each shark had been alive.
    — Samantha Agate, Kansas City Star, 31 Mar. 2026
  • The same should be true of mushroom tissue, with the level of radiocarbon serving as an indicator of the year in which the carbon was assimilated.
    — Veronique Greenwood, The Atlantic, 30 May 2017
  • The age is determined in part by estimating the age of meteorites that fall to Earth (through radiocarbon dating) and the age of Earth rocks.
    — The Washington Post, OregonLive.com, 9 Aug. 2017
  • The team analyzed these bones using radiocarbon dating to determine that the pits are roughly 8,000 years old.
    — Christopher Parker, Smithsonian Magazine, 6 July 2023
  • However, our radiocarbon dates find that some of the key sites are from a century later, dating from the mid-16th to start of the 17th centuries.
    — Popular Science, 23 June 2020
  • In 2018, Jarman published a study of the inconsistent radiocarbon dates among the old bones in the garden.
    — Joshua Levine, Smithsonian Magazine, 30 Mar. 2022
  • Material from the cesspit radiocarbon dated to the 1400s, but Sabin and her colleagues aren’t sure how many people used it.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 6 Oct. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'radiocarbon.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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