I do a lot of radiocarbon dating so maybe I can take a whack at this.
A fresh cadaver would be heavily contaminated with post-atomic bomb carbon, and would not likely provide a reliable date. Further, extremely young dates are problematical because of the ± factor. Even if you have a very good range, say ±40 years, when you calibrate your date at two sigmas you have a range of about 80 years on either side of the intercept (center). So you could potentially get a calibrated date at two sigmas of AD 1860-2020. That's not of much use in determining if a cadaver was from WWI or WWII.
A fallen log could have quite an age range. Take either a redwood tree or a bristlecone pine from the White Mountains of southern California. Each could have wood going back from several to many thousand of years old. Archaeologists take these possibilities into account when dating charcoal.
Hope this helps.
MEET THE WORLD'S OLDEST--AND HARDEST WORKING--PLANT
Mystery and questions still surround the box huckleberry (sweeter than the wild blueberry.
No one knows for sure how it got here. Since it doesn't reproduce sexually as most plants do, how did distant colonies form?
One theory is that the existing colonies are all that's left of a once more numerous glacial plant.
James C. Parks, a Millersville University biology professor is inclined to accept another theory. Though no viable seeds from box huckleberries have ever been found in the wild, fertile seeds have resulted from people manually transferring pollen from one plant to another colony.
Perhaps, once in a blue moon, a pollinated seed does make its way, perhaps by a bird, launching another colony.
Nor is there unanimity about how old huckleberry plants are. They have no rings to count, like trees. Carbon dating doesn't work. Estimates are based on how much the plant grows in a year.