How can we know how old fossils are?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Tree rings are routinely used to gauge weather. Thin rings mean a poor growing year, etc.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I was beginning to understand until you mentioned daughter nuclei. That sounds like mitosis. but how do non biotic atoms have daughter nuclei?

The term 'daughter' is a euphemism.  It clearly doesn't mean biological daughter.  Just as a large corporation has daughter companies, we don't picture a mommy corporation and a daddy corporation getting busy after a long day and too much wine.

Boru

[Anomalocaris]

Tree rings are routinely used to gauge weather. Thin rings mean a poor growing year, etc.

Yes.  And by matching the annual pattern of weather indicated by the rings in a piece of wood and correlating them to the pattern of weather indicated by another piece of wood known to be from similar regions, and repeat the process with more pieces of wood until one gets to a piece known to be cut down at a specific time, such as yesterday, it is possible to independently determine exactly which year each ring on each pieces of wood was formed completely without using C14.

You can then measure the c14 decay of a particular ring to precisely determine just how accurate within measurement error  a particular method of c14 dating is.    It turns out even the most primitive, uncalibrated c14 age dating technique is still pretty accurate.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And the really good boffins can use downed trees buried in the earth to show that a big-ass tsunami hit the British Columbian coast ~30,000 years ago.

[Anomalocaris]

Speaking of trees and organic material in fossils,  I believe in Italy trees buried by volcanic mud flow over a million years ago were found to have retained so much of their original organic material, the fossilized wood still had the same fragrance has modern wood from the same tree specie.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Speaking of trees and organic material in fossils,  I believe in Italy trees buried by volcanic mud flow over a million years ago were found to have retained so much of their original organic material, the fossilized wood still had the same fragrance has modern wood from the same tree specie.

I suspect you're right.  Amber, for instance, smells like sap if you rub it a bit (it smells a LOT like sap when you melt it).

Boru

[Rahn127]

But what if the rock was out in the sun all the time with no sun block. Would it burn up then ?

Asking for a friend

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It will unless it's a school house rock.