The application of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) for radiocarbon dating in the late 1970s was also a major achievement.Compared to conventional radiocarbon techniques such as Libby's solid carbon counting, the gas counting method popular in the mid-1950s, or liquid scintillation (LS) counting, AMS permitted the dating of much smaller sized samples with even greater precision.

It is one of the most accurate dating methods and it is completely natrual.

Cosmic rays bombard Earth’s atmosphere, creating the unstable isotope carbon-14.

This isotope lets scientists learn the ages of once-living things. is a technique used by scientists to learn the ages of biological specimens – for example, wooden archaeological artifacts or ancient human remains – from the distant past.

The resulting data, in the form of a calibration curve, is now used to convert a given measurement of radiocarbon in a sample into an estimate of the sample's calendar age.

Other corrections must be made to account for the proportion of (reservoir effects).