article_snippet.sent: Scientists have revealed a sophisticated new dating .
article_snippet.sent: , whose . research appears in the journal Nature analyzed 11 rock samples from around the nearly complete Little Foot fossil skeleton from theSterkfontein Caves to gauge Australopithecus prometheus age .
article_snippet.sent: , whose . research appears in the journal Nature analyzed 11 rock samples from around the .
article_snippet.sent: climbing, according to paleoanthropologists Ron Clarke and Kathy .
article_snippet.sent: Granger's original attempt was the first time aluminum-26 and beryllium-10 radioisotopic dating had been used to determine the age of a fossil.
article_snippet.sent: Granger's original attempt developed the method in 1997 and first used the method to study changes in mountains, rivers and other geological formations.
article_snippet.sent: Because of their very slow rate of decay, these particular radioisotopes allow dating to reach back millions of years, much further in history than the more commonly known carbon-14 dating that can only stretch back about 50,000 years, Granger's original attempt said.
article_snippet.sent: Only a small amount of these particular radioisotopes remain in the quartz after millions of years, and Only a small amount of the radioisotopes can only be measured by the ultrasensitive analysis of accelerator mass spectrometry. '
highlights_snippet.sent: New dating of fossil shows New dating of fossil is