Absolute dating radiocarbon dating. The development of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating, which allows a date to be obtained from a very small sample, has been very useful in this regard. Other radiometric dating techniques are available for earlier periods. One of the most widely used is potassium–argon dating (K–Ar dating). Potassium-40 is a radioactive isotope of potassium that decays into argon-40. The half-life of potassium-40 is 1.3 billion years, far longer than that of carbon-14, allowing much older samples to be dated. Potassium is common in rocks and minerals, allowing many samples of geochronological or archeological interest to be dated. Argon,
Hydrogen isotope biogeochemistry pyrolysis) is also an online preparation method followed by IRMS detection. This is a 'compound-specific' method, allowing separation of analytes prior to measurement and thus providing information about the isotopic composition of each individual compound. Following GC separation, samples are converted to smaller gaseous molecules for isotope measurements. GC/pyrolysis uses the pyrolysis interface between GC and IRMS for the conversion of H and O in the molecules into H and CO. GC-IRMS was first introduced by Matthews and Hayes in the late 1970s, and was later used for δC, δN, δO and δS. Helium is used as the carrier gas