Seafood Diets Distort Bone Dating

A seafood-heavy diet can throw off radiocarbon dating of human bones by hundreds of years, making the deceased appear older than they truly were. This marine reservoir effect occurs because older carbon passes through the ocean food chain before fish and other marine life transfer it to the humans who eat them. Affected samples typically appear about 400 radiocarbon years too old, although the difference can reach 800 to 1,200 years in Arctic regions. In 2018, researchers used the effect to correct the dates of an English Viking burial containing roughly 300 bodies, placing it in the late 800s rather than across several centuries.

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