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From Wikipedia (see the Related Link below):

By emitting an electron and an anti-neutrino, carbon-14 is changed into stable (non-radioactive) nitrogen-14. This decay can be used to get a measure of how long ago a piece of once-living material died. However, aquatic plants obtain some of their carbon from dissolved carbonates which are likely to be very old, and thus deficient in the carbon-14 isotope, so the method is less reliable for such materials as well as for samples derived from animals with such plants in their food chain.

The reaction is:

146C ---> 147N + e- + antineutrino

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