Measuring carbon-14 levels in human tissue could help forensic scientists determine age and year of death in cases involving unidentified human remains. Archaeologists have long used carbon-14 dating (also known as radiocarbon dating) to estimate the age of certain objects.

Can living humans be carbon dated?

Carbon dating is used to work out the age of organic material — in effect, any living thing. As a rule, carbon dates are younger than calendar dates: a bone carbon-dated to 10,000 years is around 11,000 years old, and 20,000 carbon years roughly equates to 24,000 calendar years.

Can you carbon date yourself?

No. Carbon dating works because we are constantly consuming sources of carbon with carbon-14 while we are alive, replenishing the relatively higher ratio of this isotope to its non-decaying peers, carbon-12 and -13. When we die, we are no longer replenishing that, and it begins to decay.