Castlepook’s Woolly Mammoth
Radiocarbon chronology is essential here, but it does not turn the past into a diary. A radiocarbon determination measures the remaining carbon-14 in once-living material and must be calibrated against long-term variations in atmospheric carbon. The resulting calendar estimates can span many centuries or millennia, especially beyond 30,000 years ago. They date the death of an animal or the formation of organic sediment, not necessarily the time when an associated bone was moved, marked or excavated.