Oh, wow, oh, oh, whoa, oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

Oh, wow. Hello, you're listening to The Science of Everything podcast, episode 156 fossils and dating methods. I'm your host, James Fodor.

So today we're going to discuss the processes by which geologists are able to date different rocks

and sediments and place them in relative chronological ordering. This will be preparation for the next episode we're going to do looking at the geological

time scale.

But before we discuss what we know about the temporal sequence of events in the Earth's

history, we need to know a little bit about the mechanisms and the processes by which we come

to this knowledge.

And so that's why we need to talk about dating methods. And one of the most important dating methods is fossils.

So I'll also be talking about the processes of fossilization, what fossils are, and how they're

important, how they're used for dating purposes and establishing relationships between sediments

in the geological timescale.

Recommended pre-listening is episode 74, Minerals and Rocks.

So let's make a start by distinguishing a few commonly confused terms, particularly I want

to distinguish between chronostratigraphy and geochronology.

These terms are very similar, and they're're often confused and it's also true that different

scientists have used the terms differently at different times.

You can actually find articles talking about the proper usages of these terms.

I'm going to simplify things a little bit here, just for ease of explanation.

Basically, chrono stratigraphy, if you think about breaking up that term,

crono relates to time and stratigraphy relates to the study of layers of sediment.

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