Radiocarbon dating relies on the assumption that organic or inorganic materials were in equilibrium with the production of 14C in the atmosphere (Jull, 2018), and that the 14C in the organism will decay, converting 14C back to 14N through beta decay, following the death of the organism.

What assumptions are made in the process of radiocarbon dating?

Radiocarbon dating would be most successful if two important factors were true: that the concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere had been constant for thousands of years, and that carbon-14 moved readily through the atmosphere, biosphere, oceans and other reservoirs—in a process known as the carbon cycle.