A method of dating rock layers by their relationships or proximity to each other. Both archaeologists and paleontologists use relative dating.
Relative dating is a geological technique for estimating the age of a particular rock formation by comparing fossils found within it to fossils found within similar areas or formations. If a specific fossil is found in a rock layer in one area, then it is likely that any other rocks anywhere else in the world that contain that particular species of fossil will be of the same age. Essentially, you are dating one layer relative to other rock layers.
Determining age relative to other items or events, such as saying one point style is older than another. Artifact styles and stratigraphy are often used to give sites relative dates.
The fixing of a geologic structure or event in a chronological sequence relative to other geologic structures or events. See also numerical dating.
Determination of the chronological order of a sequence of events in relation to one another without reference to their ages measured in years. Relative geologic dating is based primarily on superposition, faunal succession, and crosscutting relations.
The process of placing rocks and geologic structures in the correct chronological order. This process does not yield ages in number of years. See radiometric dating.
Determination of the relative age of archaeological materials but not of specific calendric dates.
An estimate of the time an organism lived based on the location of its fossils in rock layers. 392
determining the age of a specimen relative to its position in a stratigraphical or archaeological sequence; determination of chronological sequence without recourse to a fixed time scale
A method of dating ancient artifacts by their relation to other objects, not to a historical moment. See also radiometric dating, absolute dating.
Relative dating is the simpler dating technique of stating; 'this is older than that' - If you have a context dated to the 17th century then deposits beneath will be earlier though you may be uncertain how old precisely. (see also Absolute Dating)
Dating methods that determine time with respect to stratigraphic position, for example deeper layers being older, or with respect to some changing quantity or property, such as magnetic polarity.
Dates expressed relative to one another (for instance earlier, later, more recent, after Noah's flood, and so forth).
dating a fossil by seeing what other fossils of know age are found with it, or by dating it on the basis of the date of the rocks in which it is found (see absolute dating)
The process of ordering fossils, rocks, and geologic events from oldest to youngest. Because of the way sedimentary rocks form, lower layers in most series are older than higher layers, making it possible to determine which fossils found in those layers are oldest and which are youngest. By itself, relative dating cannot assign any absolute age to rocks or fossils.
assigning chronological position by comparing one object with another. Relatively dating suggests that an object is earlier or later than something else
Before the advent of absolute dating in the 20th century, archaeologists and geologists were largely limited to the use of Relative Dating techniques. Estimates of the order of prehistoric and geological events were determined by using basic stratigraphic rules, and by observing where fossil organisms lay in the geological record, stratified bands of rocks present throughout the world.
