A theoretical description of the ultrafast ablation of diamond and graphite is presented. Laser induced lattice deformations and melting are described with the help of molecular dynamics simulations on time dependent potential energy surfaces derived from a microscopic electronic Hamiltonian. Thermalization effects are explicitly taken into account. We calculate the ablation thresholds as a function of the pulse duration for femtosecond pulses. For both materials we obtain smoothly increasing thresholds for increasing duration. The damage and ablation mechanisms are discussed. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V All rights reserved.