Despite seeming like a relatively stable place, the Earth's surface has changed dramatically over the past 4.6 billion years. Mountains have been built and eroded, continents and oceans have moved great distances, and the Earth has fluctuated from being extremely cold and almost completely covered with ice to being very warm and ice-free. These changes typically occur so slowly that they are barely detectable over the span of a human life, yet even at this instant, the Earth's surface is moving and changing. As these changes have occurred, organisms have evolved, and remnants of some have been preserved as fossils.
A fossil can be studied to determine what kind of organism it represents, how the organism lived, and how it was preserved. However, by itself a fossil has little meaning unless it is placed within some context. The age of the fossil must be determined so it can be compared to other fossil species from the same time period. Understanding the ages of related fossil species helps scientists piece together the evolutionary history of a group of organisms.
For example, based on the primate fossil record, scientists know that living primates evolved from fossil primates and that this evolutionary history took tens of millions of years. By comparing fossils of different primate species, scientists can examine how features changed and how primates evolved through time. However, the age of each fossil primate needs to be determined so that fossils of the same age found in different parts of the world and fossils of different ages can be compared.
There are three general approaches that allow scientists to date geological materials and answer the question: "How old is this fossil?" First, the relative age of a fossil can be determined. Relative dating puts geologic events in chronological order without requiring that a specific numerical age be assigned to each event. Second, it is possible to determine the numerical age for fossils or earth materials. Numerical ages estimate the date of a geological event and can sometimes reveal quite precisely when a fossil species existed in time. Third, magnetism in rocks can be used to estimate the age of a fossil site. This method uses the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field, which has changed through time, to determine ages for fossils and rocks.
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