{"id":85974,"date":"2018-12-19T04:02:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T12:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/two-stalagmites-found-in-chinese-cave-are-a-holy-grail-for-accurate-radiocarbon-dating"},"modified":"2018-12-19T04:02:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T12:02:24","slug":"two-stalagmites-found-in-chinese-cave-are-a-holy-grail-for-accurate-radiocarbon-dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/two-stalagmites-found-in-chinese-cave-are-a-holy-grail-for-accurate-radiocarbon-dating","title":{"rendered":"Two Stalagmites Found in Chinese Cave Are a \u2018Holy Grail\u2019 for Accurate Radiocarbon Dating"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/two-stalagmites-found-in-chinese-cave-are-a-holy-grail-for-accurate-radiocarbon-dating2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Since its inception in the 1950s, radiocarbon dating has proven indispensable to archaeologists and climate scientists, who rely on the technique to accurately date organic compounds. But a good thing just got better, owing to the discovery of two stalagmites in a Chinese cave containing a seamless chronological atmospheric record dating back to the last Ice Age.<\/p>\n<p>An unbroken, high-resolution record of atmospheric carbon-12 and carbon-14 was found in a pair of stalagmites located within Hulu Cave near Nanjing, China, according to new <a href=\"http:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/cgi\/doi\/10.1126\/science.aau0747\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">research<\/a> published today in Science. Because this record extends back to the last glacial period, to around 54,000 years ago, scientists are now equipped with a more accurate standard for use in radiocarbon calibration.<\/p>\n<p><!-- Link: <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/two-stalagmites-found-in-chinese-cave-are-a-holy-grail-1831074289\">https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/two-stalagmites-found-in-chinese-cave-ar...1831074289<\/a> --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since its inception in the 1950s, radiocarbon dating has proven indispensable to archaeologists and climate scientists, who rely on the technique to accurately date organic compounds. But a good thing just got better, owing to the discovery of two stalagmites in a Chinese cave containing a seamless chronological atmospheric record dating back to the last [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":391,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/391"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85974\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}