Isotopic geochemistry has several principal roles in geology. One is concerned with the enrichment or impoverishment of certain isotopic species that results from the influence of differences in mass of molecules containing different isotopes. Measurements of the proportions of various isotopic species can be used as a form of geologic thermometer. The ratio of oxygen-16 to oxygen-18 in calcium carbonate secreted by various marine organisms from calcium carbonate in solution in seawater is influenced by the temperature of the seawater. Precise measurement of the proportions of oxygen-16 with respect to oxygen-18 in calcareous shells of some fossil marine organisms provides a means of estimating the temperatures of the seas in which they lived. The varying ocean temperatures during and between the major advances of glaciers during the ice ages have been inferred by analyzing the isotopic composition of the skeletons of floating organisms recovered as fossils in sediment on the seafloor. Other uses of isotopic analyses that involve temperature-dependent rate processes include the progressive removal of crystals from cooling igneous magmas.

Another role of isotopic geochemistry that is of great importance in geology is radiometric age dating. The ability to quantify the geologic time scale—i.e., to date the events of the geologic past in terms of numbers of years—is largely a result of coupling radiometric dating techniques with older, classical methods of establishing relative geologic ages. As explained earlier, radiometric dating methods are based on the general principle that a particular radioactive isotope (radioactive parent or source material) incorporated in geologic material decays at a uniform rate, producing a decay product, or daughter isotope. Some radiometric “clocks” are based on the ratio of the proportion of parent to daughter isotopes, others on the proportion of parent remaining, and still others on the proportion of daughter isotopes with respect to each other. For example, uranium-238 decays ultimately to lead-206, which is one of the four naturally occurring isotopic species of lead. Minerals that contain uranium-238 when initially formed may be dated by measuring the proportions of lead-206 and uranium-238; the older the specimen, the greater the proportion of lead-206 with respect to uranium-238. The decay of potassium-40 to form argon-40 (calcium-40 is produced in this decay process as well) is also a widely used radiometric dating tool, though there are several other parent-daughter pairs that are used in radiometric dating, including another isotope of uranium (uranium-235), which decays ultimately to form lead-207, and thorium-232, which decays to lead-208.

Uranium-238 and uranium-235 decay very slowly, although uranium-235 decays more rapidly than uranium-238. The rate of decay may be expressed in several ways. One way is by the radioactive isotope’s half-life—the interval of time in which half of any given initial amount will have decayed. The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4,510,000,000 years, whereas the half-life of uranium-235 is about 713,000,000 years. Other radioactive isotopes decay at greatly differing rates, with half-lives ranging from a fraction of a second to quadrillions of years.

It is useful to combine a variety of isotopic methods to determine the complete history of a crustal rock. A samarium-147–neodymium-143 date on a granitic gneiss, for example, may be interpreted as the time of mantle–crust differentiation or crustal accretion that produced the original magmatic granite. Also, a lead-207–lead-206 date on a zircon will indicate the crystallization age of the granite. In contrast, a rubidium-87–strontium-87 date of a whole rock sample may give the time at which the rock became a closed system for migration of the strontium during the period of metamorphism that converted the granite to a granitic gneiss. When potassium-40 breaks down to argon-40, the argon continues to diffuse until the rock has cooled to about 200 °C; therefore, a potassium-40–argon-40 date may be interpreted as the time when the granite cooled through a blocking temperature that stopped all argon release. This may reflect the cooling of the granite during late uplift in a young mountain belt.

Since the 1980s two technological advancements have greatly increased the geologist’s ability to compute the isotopic age of rocks and minerals. The SHRIMP (Sensitive High Mass Resolution Ion Microprobe) enables the accurate determination of the uranium-lead age of the mineral zircon, and this has revolutionized the understanding of the isotopic age of formation of zircon-bearing igneous granitic rocks. Another technological development is the ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer), which is able to provide the isotopic age of zircon, titanite, rutile, and monazite. These minerals are common to many igneous and metamorphic rocks.

Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon (carbon-12 and carbon-13 are stable isotopes) with a half-life of 5,570 years. Carbon-14 is incorporated in all living material, for it is derived either directly or indirectly from its presence in atmospheric carbon dioxide. The moderately short half-life of carbon-14 makes it useful for dating biological materials that are more than a few hundred years old and less than 30,000 years old. It has been used to provide correlation of events within this time span, particularly those of the Pleistocene Epoch involving the Earth’s most recent ice ages.