There's something wrong with dinosaur remnants. They might be only 40,000 years old.
10:43 AM Monday, May 13, 2013
Dinosaur bones Carbon-14 dated to less than 40,000
years
Carbon dated dinosaur bones (well-preserved dinosaur fossils); the radiocarbon tests
Researchers have found a reason for the puzzling survival of soft tissue and
collagen in dinosaur bones - the bones are younger than anyone ever guessed.
Carbon-14 (C-14) dating of multiple samples of bone from 8 dinosaurs from
Texas, Alaska, Colorado, and Montana revealed that they are only 22,000 to
39,000 years old. Since dinosaurs are thought to be over 65 million years old,
the news is stunning. And more than some can tolerate. After the AOGS-AGU
conference in Singapore, the abstract was removed from the conference
website by two chairmen because they could not accept the findings. Unwilling to challenge the
data openly, they erased the report from public view without a word to the
authors or even to the AOGS officers, until after an investigation. It won't be
The researchers presented their findings at the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics
Meeting in Singapore, August 13-17, a conference of the American Geophysical
Union (AGU) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS).
Carbon-14 is considered to be unassailable in its reliability among dating
methods. It's accuracy as a technique has been verified by using C-14 to date
artifacts whose age is known historically. The possibility that the amount of C-14
in the air has fluctuated adds a small uncertainty. But the greater possibility for error is
that the amount of C-14 in bone samples has been altered by contaminants such as
decayed organic matter from soils.
Dr. Thomas Seiler, a physicist from Germany, gave the presentation in Singapore.
He says that his team and the laboratories they employed took special care to avoid
contamination. That included protecting the samples, avoiding cracked areas in
the bones, and meticulous pre-cleaning of the samples with chemicals to
remove possible contaminants. Knowing that small concentrations of collagen can attract
contamination, they compared precision Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS)
tests of collagen and bioapatite (hard carbonate bone mineral) with conventional
counting methods of large bone fragments from the same dinosaurs.
"Comparing such entirely different molecules as minerals and organics from the
same bone region, we obtained concordant C-14 signals which were well below
the upper limits of C-14 dating. These, together with many other remarkable
signal concordances between samples from different fossils, geographic regions
and stratigraphic positions make random contamination as origin of the C-14
signals unlikely", he notes. "If dinosaur bones are 65 million years old, there
should not be one atom of C-14 left in them."
Many dinosaur bones are not fossilized. Dr. Mary Schweitzer, associate
professor of marine, earth, and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State
University, surprised scientists in 2005 when she reported finding soft tissue in
dinosaur bones. She started a firestorm of controversy in 2007 and 2008 when
she reported that she had sequenced proteins in the dinosaur bone. Critics
charged that the findings were mistaken or that what she called soft tissue was
really biofilm produced by bacteria that had entered from outside the bone.
Schweitzer answered the challenge by testing with antibodies. Her report in
2009 confirmed the presence of collagen and other proteins that bacteria do
not make. Also in 2009, the team of Dr. Phil Wilby discovered a fossilized squid
that contained a sac of ink so well-preserved that it could be used in a pen for
writing, found in rock that is considered to be 150 million years old.
In 2011, a Swedish team found soft tissue and biomolecules in the bones of
another
creature from the time of the dinosaurs, a Mosasaur, which was a giant lizard
that swam in shallow ocean waters. Schweitzer herself wonders why these
materials are preserved when all the models say they should be degraded.
That is, if they are over 65 million years old as the conventional wisdom says.
The theoretical limit for C-14 dating is 100,000 years before present using AMS.
For practical purposes, it is 50,000 to 60,000 years. Dinosaur bones with
Carbon-14 dates in the range of 22,000 to 39,000 years before present,
combined with the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur bones, indicate that
something is wrong with the conventional wisdom about dinosaurs.
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Dear Tap,
Researchers presented their findings at the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore, August 13-17, a conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS).
Best -
Steve Gibbs
OXFORD
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