In the late 1700s, machines that could blast through rock to build roads and railways were invented, exposing deep layers of rocks. How would you expect this development to aid the science of paleontology?

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Hi everyone here's our next problem. It says the technique that utilizes radioactive impurities materials to trace or assign absolute dates when they were formed is called. Well we've got kind of a nice easy hint on this one to help us find our answer. We're looking for a technique to assign dates. And our choice A here has the word dating in it. And indeed this technique is called choice a radio metric dating. We even have our prefix radio in there using radioactive impurities. This is also called sometimes radiocarbon dating or radioactive dating. So it uses the idea that radioactive materials decay over time. And you can look at the change in the ratio between the stable isotopes to the radioactive isotope to date how old the fossil is. So let's just walk through other answer choices. So we know why they're not correct. Choice B is electron microscopy microscopy. We see the word microscope in there and that's that technique for obtaining very high resolution images of biological and non biological specimens. Very very very tiny things at the level of electrons. But it's not a dating method. So we'll cross that out. Choice C. Is micro tone. A micro tome is a tool used to cut sections or very thin slices of materials that can then be studied under a microscope. You see that prefix micro there but not our answer. It's not a form of dating. And finally, Choice D maceration. Maceration is a technique used to extract organic microfossils or carriage in from rock samples. Rock sample is cleaned and then crushed into small pieces but not dating. That's just the technique used to um, you know, sort of grind up the rocket into very small pieces for extracting materials from it. So Choice D also not our answer. So the technique that uses radioactive impurities and materials to trace or assign absolute dates when they were formed is called choice a radio metric dating. See you in the next video.

In the late 1700s, machines that could blast through rock to build roads and railways were invented, exposing deep layers of rocks. How would you expect this development to aid the science of paleontology?

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Key Concepts

Stratigraphy

Fossilization

Geological Time Scale