Which method yields an actual age rather than a relative age?

• A. Relative Dating
• B. Stratigraphy
• C. Absolute Dating
• D. Fossil correlation

Answer: (C)

The main idea is distinguishing methods that give a numerical age from those that only establish order in time. Absolute dating provides a real number in years for when a rock or fossil formed, using quantitative clocks like radioactive decay (for example, uranium-lead or carbon-14 dating) or other techniques that produce ages in millions or thousands of years. This is what lets us say, with a date like 65 million years ago, rather than just saying one layer is older than another.

Relative dating methods, on the other hand, place events in a sequence without assigning exact ages. Stratigraphy looks at rock layers and their order, while fossil correspondence uses the presence of certain fossils to align layers across regions and infer which layers are older or younger relative to each other. Because the question asks for an actual age rather than a sequence, absolute dating is the best fit.