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Science
Eran Elhaik, Senior Lecturer in Population, Medical and Evolutionary Genomics, Lund University

Radiocarbon dating only works half the time – we may have found the solution

Queen Elizabeth II William Conqueror TPS
A new DNA method could help making it easier to date skeletons Malinka333/Shutterstock

Dating is everything in archaeology. Exciting discoveries of ancient burial sites or jewellery might make headlines, but for scientists, this kind of discovery is only meaningful if we can tell how old the artefacts are.

So when chemist Willard Libby developed radiocarbon dating in 1946, it was a breakthrough for archaeology and he was awarded a Nobel prize for his achievement.

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