Since there are practical limits to the age range of the method, most samples must be younger than 50,000 years and older than 100 years.

What is the limitation of carbon dating?

Despite its usefulness, radiocarbon dating has a number of limitations. First, the older the object, the less carbon-14 there is to measure. Radiocarbon dating is therefore limited to objects that are younger than 50,000 to 60,000 years or so.

Why is there a limit to carbon 14 dating?

Because C-14 dating uses the decay rate of Carbon 14 as its measure (more on this later), this gives upper and lower limits to the dating method. If the sample is too young, not enough decay has occurred. This means that the upper limit of C-14 dating is currently around 50,000 years ago.