Geologists often need to know the age of material that they find. They use absolute dating methods, sometimes called numerical dating, to give rocks an actual date, or date range, in numbers of years. This is different to relative dating, which only puts geological events in time order.

What are the two types of geological dating?

Scientists are always spouting information about the ages of rocks and fossils. How do they know these ages? Well, they figure it out using two different methods: relative dating and numerical dating.

What are the two types of dating that geologists use to determine the age of rocks?

Relative dating places events or rocks in their chronologic sequence or order of occurrence. Absolute dating places events or rocks at a specific time. If a geologist claims to be younger than his or her co-worker, that is a relative age. If a geologist claims to be 45 years old, that is an absolute age.