Dating Fossils

[John Jones]

I recently saw at some CT web site that scientists had used ¹⁴C dating to determine the age of triceratops fossils at about 34,000 years.

I've done a little carbon dating in university, and I understand that the upper limit age limit using this technique is about 50,000 years.

I have a question: Is there a legitimate reason to ¹⁴C date something presumed to be >65 million years old?

 

[Mojo]

DOC helpfully posted this a couple of years ago (after inserting the word "carbon" into the post he was replying to):

From the article: Problems with Radiometric and Carbon-14 Dating -- From the website
The California Institute for Ancient Studies

"Are there things that can't be carbon dated?

The method doesn't work on things that didn't get their carbon from the air. This leaves out aquatic creatures since their carbon might originate from dissolved carbonate rocks limestone. This in turn causes problems in dating animals that eat sea food.

We can't date things that are too old. After about 10 half lifes, there is very little C-14 left to measure."

http://www.specialtyinterests.net/carbon14.html

 

[Soapy Sam]

I recently saw at some CT web site that scientists had used ¹⁴C dating to determine the age of triceratops fossils at about 34,000 years.

I've done a little carbon dating in university, and I understand that the upper limit age limit using this technique is about 50,000 years.

I have a question: Is there a legitimate reason to ¹⁴C date something presumed to be >65 million years old?

I can't think of one.

Perhaps just careless word use? Non specialists and many journalists use "Carbon dating" to mean any form of radiometric dating.

Or perhaps just stupidity. If you apply a test that can't possibly give a sensible date, then you will get a nonsensical date, which may be what you wanted. I have no idea what date a C14 test would give from (say) a carbonaceous chondrite. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be 4.7 billion years.

It might be "Thursday".

 

[John Jones]

DOC helpfully posted this a couple of years ago (after inserting the word "carbon" into the post he was replying to):

I remember that. DOC was trying to conflate 14C dating with all radiometric dating.

But is there a legitimate reason to use carbon 14 to date a dinosaur fossil?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It was probably contamination rather than the actual fossil that they dated. That's why you take samples from several places on an item when you date it by whatever method is appropriate.

 

[John Jones]

I can't think of one.

Perhaps just careless word use? Non specialists and many journalists use "Carbon dating" to mean any form of radiometric dating.

Or perhaps just stupidity. If you apply a test that can't possibly give a sensible date, then you will get a nonsensical date, which may be what you wanted. I have no idea what date a C14 test would give from (say) a carbonaceous chondrite. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be 4.7 billion years.

It might be "Thursday".

The highlighted is what I suspect. The use of carbon 14 in the cited journal was deliberate and repeated, Here it is:

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news...-horn-dated-33500-020159#sthash.TWiUWsg6.dpuf

I know nothing about that web site. Before I wrote it off as pseudoscience, I wanted to make sure there wasn't a legitimate reason for doing this (¹⁴C dating of dinosaur fossils) that I didn't know about.

 

[John Jones]

It was probably contamination rather than the actual fossil that they dated. That's why you take samples from several places on an item when you date it by whatever method is appropriate.

But ¹⁴C dating cannot give a meaningful age to something >65 million years old. Why even attempt it?

 

[Correa Neto]

Dating fossils? I sense a joke here...

Anyway, using C isotopes to date non-organic stuff is stupid by itself unless we are talking about shells and materials like pottery and some pigments. The dino bones quite probably have already been substituted by minerals during the fossilization process – yes, there are a number of fossilization processes, but the odds of preserving the original bones are very very very very low. Dating stuff older than ~70Ky is also stupid (some techniques may increase this value by a few tens of Ky); not enough parent isotopes are left to be detected.

So it’s a double-stupid or some sort of dishonest move.

Assuming there was some work done and the whole stuff is not just yet another creationist lie, the 35Ky date reflects something other than the dinosaur bones. Contamination of some sort; something related to weathering processes (pedogenesis - soil formation involves several biologic processes and since dinosaur fossils are found at outcropping rocks, the fossils and the rocks hosting them must have been subject to some sort of weathering). So, in this case we would have a distortion and/or simple ignorance from the creationists’ part. No surprise, again.

 

[Mojo]

The highlighted is what I suspect. The use of carbon 14 in the cited journal was deliberate and repeated, Here it is:

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news...-horn-dated-33500-020159#sthash.TWiUWsg6.dpuf

That doesn't cite the journal it was published in.

 

[Mojo]

Incidentally, here's some info about the museum that sent the horn for testing.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Incidentally, here's some info about the museum that sent the horn for testing.

Game over.

 

[John Jones]

Incidentally, here's some info about the museum that sent the horn for testing.

From that site:

Most of the $1.5 million needed to open the museum was raised by the Foundation Advancing Creation Truth from citizens and groups in Montana.

That's good enough for me.

EDIT: I mistakenly called that other web site a journal in an earler post.

 

[Correa Neto]

Most of the $1.5 million needed to open the museum was raised by the Foundation Advancing Creation Truth from citizens and groups in Montana.

'Splains 't all...

BS... BS... Everywhere there...

eta- Ninjaed by Mojo. Damn you. Damn you all. God, Oh my beloved God full of love, I pray for thee to smite my adversaries! Punish them for ninjaing me!

 

[Andy_Ross]

from the link

In a state filled with dinosaurrelated museums, the Glendive Dinosaur & Fossil Museum is the second-largest dinosaur museum in the state (only the famed Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman is larger). However, the Glendive Dinosaur & Fossil Museum is not your typical natural history museum. Instead, it’s an elaborate young-earth advertisement that uses Montana’s rich dinosaur-related history to lure people to lessons in biblical literalism and anti-science nonsense.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

But ¹⁴C dating cannot give a meaningful age to something >65 million years old. Why even attempt it?

I agree, but you can get anomalous readings from contamination, and if they actually sampled the fossil and used ¹⁴C dating they would get a reading within the limits of that system. There may have been some selective choices of sample sites involved. That would mean they DID get a legitimate reading for that spot, allowing them to say "It's ONLY 34,000 years old."

I hope that's clear.

 

[John Jones]

I agree, but you can get anomalous readings from contamination, and if they actually sampled the fossil and used ¹⁴C dating they would get a reading within the limits of that system. There may have been some selective choices of sample sites involved. That would mean they DID get a legitimate reading for that spot, allowing them to say "It's ONLY 34,000 years old."

I hope that's clear.

Yes, I see what you're saying. Thx.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Yes, I see what you're saying. Thx.

Hmmm, I must have done something wrong.

 

[Olowkow]

The Triceratops brow horn was excavated by palaeontologist Otis Kline Jr, microscope scientist Mark Armitage, and microbiologist and avocational palaeontologist Kevin Anderson, in May 2012, and two horn samples (GDFM 12.001a and GDFM 12.001b) were given to the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum in Montana. - See more at: http://www.ancient-origins.net/news...ed-33500-020159#sthash.TWiUWsg6.QocN6Xqt.dpuf

The Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, which opened its doors earlier this year, boasts Montana’s second-largest set of displayed dinosaur remains. The record is still held by the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. Both are located in Montana near a rich cache of world-famous fossils. The Glendive Museum stands apart, however, in that it presents dinosaurs as having been drowned and their remains preserved in the massive worldwide flood described in the Bible. This view has prompted reactionary comments from mainstream scientists.
The museum’s founder and director Otis E. Kline, Jr., presented two rationally testable models to the Gazette for how certain marine fossils were transported inland: “There's two ways these fossils could get to Kansas….The evolutionary way says there was an inland sea that came from the Gulf of Mexico. But the biblical creation way says it was the flood of Noah's day.”1

Where the Institute for Creation Research is involved, all bets are off. They like to make **** up. And by the way, what's a "microscope scientist"?

 

[Mike!]

Dating fossils? I sense a joke here...Anyway, using C isotopes to date non-organic stuff is stupid by itself unless we are talking about shells and materials like pottery and some pigments. The dino bones quite probably have already been substituted by minerals during the fossilization process – yes, there are a number of fossilization processes, but the odds of preserving the original bones are very very very very low. Dating stuff older than ~70Ky is also stupid (some techniques may increase this value by a few tens of Ky); not enough parent isotopes are left to be detected.

So it’s a double-stupid or some sort of dishonest move.

Assuming there was some work done and the whole stuff is not just yet another creationist lie, the 35Ky date reflects something other than the dinosaur bones. Contamination of some sort; something related to weathering processes (pedogenesis - soil formation involves several biologic processes and since dinosaur fossils are found at outcropping rocks, the fossils and the rocks hosting them must have been subject to some sort of weathering). So, in this case we would have a distortion and/or simple ignorance from the creationists’ part. No surprise, again.

Yeah, date someone your own age, or younger.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

And by the way, what's a "microscope scientist"?

Zacharias Janssen?