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Updated: Aug 31, 2025

Sampling and Pretreatment of Tooth Enamel Carbonate for Stable Carbon and Oxygen Isotope Analysis
Published on: August 15, 2018
REFINING RADIOCARBON DATING OF IVORY
Vojtěch Valášek1,2, Kateřina Pachnerová Brabcová1, Jitka Kufnerová1,2
1Department of Radiation Dosimetry, Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Na Truhlářce 39/64, 180 00 Praha 8, Czech Republic.
Abstract:
Elephants are on the verge of extinction due to extensive poaching to obtain ivory and illegal income. According to international law, the trade in ivory of African elephants is outlawed, with a few exceptions, as for example in European Union for antique ivory obtained before 1947. There is basically only one physical method for determining the age of ivory and that is radiocarbon dating. The method uses artificially temporarily enhanced 14C content in the atmosphere to date relevant samples with high resolution. Since this advantage is slowly fading, the question arises of how to fill in the loss of the resolution. One possibility is exploiting the chronology of ivory. This work studies a whole elephant tusk and uses radiocarbon dating of samples obtained longitudinally and transversely from along the tusk to analyse the growth rate.
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