Carbon dated Dino fossil article?

[iambeeman]

I just read this article Carbon Dating of '70 Million Year Old' Mosasaur Soft Tissues Yields Surprising Results

I was wondering what people thought.

 

[Smidlee]

What we need to do is to test this to see if it's possible for something after 70 millions year to still have soft tissue and C-14. I like to see if something could just stay buried 70 million years with current erosion rates. (USA could have eroded away 7 times in that time span) The only way to find out is to buried something very deep and wait 70 millions years and see what happens.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

The only way to find out is to buried something very deep and wait 70 millions years and see what happens.

Any volunteers?

 

[iambeeman]

From my understanding the scientists involved already know the spontaneous decay rates (the rate at which decay happens without bacterial action) of the tissues in question. By extrapolating those rates they know that even 1my would be near impossible. And the same goes for the C14 concentrations.

 

[metherion]

I hope it does not step outside of fellowship bounds to interject with this point:

The half life of C-14 is around... 5000 years if I remember correctly.

So after 1 million years, well, that's what? 200 half lives? Call it 150 half lives because I think I'm underestimating the half life.

After 1 million years, there would be 1 2[sup]20[/sup]th left. That's not detectable.

As a matter of fact, I think the ceiling on C-14 dating is about 60k years.

Using it on something dated over a million years old is rather silly to begin with. It's no surprise it yielded a bogus (even a high) result.

Metherion

 

[iambeeman]

The ceiling for C14 is 50k years if my memory serves correctly. But isn't that rather the point? If they find ANY C14 in their tests it calls into question the efficacy of C14 dating methods.

 

[metherion]

They're also light on their methods. They don't have any listed.

Did they ever use an organic coating? Did they ever use an organic preservative? What chemicals did they use to extract the matrix? Did they ever have to put it under high pressure gas, and what kind?

Specifically stated in the article, they state they used Aniline Blue. Aniline Blue is a mixture of methyl blue and water blue, which have between them 11 substituted benzene rings and at least ONE methyl group. Guess that the primary component of those are? Carbon.

Without a more in-depth article on all their methods, I really couldn't say more. That's more a popular science article than an actual scientific article, so I can't really glean much from it, except that using carbon dating on something wildly outside the age range can't be expected to yield correct results.

Metherion

 

[juvenissun]

They're also light on their methods. They don't have any listed.

Did they ever use an organic coating? Did they ever use an organic preservative? What chemicals did they use to extract the matrix? Did they ever have to put it under high pressure gas, and what kind?

Specifically stated in the article, they state they used Aniline Blue. Aniline Blue is a mixture of methyl blue and water blue, which have between them 11 substituted benzene rings and at least ONE methyl group. Guess that the primary component of those are? Carbon.

Without a more in-depth article on all their methods, I really couldn't say more. That's more a popular science article than an actual scientific article, so I can't really glean much from it, except that using carbon dating on something wildly outside the age range can't be expected to yield correct results.

Metherion

You forgot one possibility. It is actually NOT outside the dating range.

 

[metherion]

I'm not sure how I can respond to that without leaving the bounds of fellowshiping that I actually might have pushed last post. At least, not in this subforum. So, please forgive me if I refrain from responding.



Metherion

 

[freezerman2000]

The ceiling for C14 is 50k years if my memory serves correctly. But isn't that rather the point? If they find ANY C14 in their tests it calls into question the efficacy of C14 dating methods.

Apparently, dating objects older than 50-60k years is possible using the PRINCIPLE of c-14, but with a different element.
Read the entire article...(it's short).
HowStuffWorks "Carbon Dating"

 

[Smidlee]

You forgot one possibility. It is actually NOT outside the dating range.

I think he point is most scientist has already made up their minds of how old certain fossils/rocks are and any result that shows different from their view has to be in error. So it silly to carbon date something that's already millions of year old in their minds. Just like it also silly trying to publish anything that would undermined the Big Bang theory. Scientist hates when the data/facts points in many different directions and they will try they best to force the data to fit their theory.

 

[juvenissun]

I'm not sure how I can respond to that without leaving the bounds of fellowshiping that I actually might have pushed last post. At least, not in this subforum. So, please forgive me if I refrain from responding.



Metherion

I tell you what you can do. You may start to argue that a piece of flesh can indeed be naturally preserved for million of years, IF this and that conditions were met.

I am interested to see what can you say. Are you a chemist? So it shouldn't be too hard to make some speculations.

 

[Biblewriter]

They're also light on their methods. They don't have any listed.

Did they ever use an organic coating? Did they ever use an organic preservative? What chemicals did they use to extract the matrix? Did they ever have to put it under high pressure gas, and what kind?

Specifically stated in the article, they state they used Aniline Blue. Aniline Blue is a mixture of methyl blue and water blue, which have between them 11 substituted benzene rings and at least ONE methyl group. Guess that the primary component of those are? Carbon.

Without a more in-depth article on all their methods, I really couldn't say more. That's more a popular science article than an actual scientific article, so I can't really glean much from it, except that using carbon dating on something wildly outside the age range can't be expected to yield correct results.

Metherion

You are correct that the article is more of a Popular Science type of article, but that does not prove it is inaccurate. It only deonstrates that this article, in and by itself, is not proof of a scientific nature.

It is an extreme logical error to assume the accuracy of a presumed 70 million year age of the fossil when we find clear evidence that it cannot possibly be even close to that old.

That reminds me of the conclusion to an article I personally read in the Journal of Geology (dating from around the mid fifties if I remember correctly) about homonoid footprints widely found in the eastern part of the United States in strata that was much too old, according to conventional wisdom.

"If man, or man's early ape ancestor, or that that early ape's ancestor's early mamilian ancestor, lived as far back as in [that age- I forget which it was], then the whole science of geology is so wrong that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving. Hence, science rejects the attractive explanation that man made these footprints in the mud of [that period] with his feet."

But that didn't take the footprints out of the strata!

Evolutionary "science" is based on gross oversimplifications and glossing over data that does not fit the theory. But true science concentrates on the outliers even more than on the data generally found.

The truth is that geology does not show gradual development of species. It shows a long series of stable ecosystems that appeared suddenly (in geological terms,) flourished virtually unchanged for long periods of time, and then suddenly vanished, only to be immediately replaced by a different stable ecosystem. Every professional geologist that I have personally confronted (in private) with this data has at first denied it, and then finally admitted that he personally knew this to be correct.

This agrees absolutely with the old earth creationists viewpoint, which is not a concession to "science," but a literal interpretation of scripture based on fine details in the Hebrew wording of the scriptures.

 

[iambeeman]

According to the link they provided in their foot note Thye prepaired the sample thus :
14C analysis

In order to remove absorbed carbonates and humic acids, a small bone sample (2 g) was pre-treated according to the acid-alkali-acid method; i.e., it was washed in 2% HCl solution at 80°C for 12 h, then in 5% NaOH solution at 80°C for 5 h, followed by a final wash in 2% HCl. After this procedure, the dried residues (258 mg) were combusted to CO2 using CuO as oxidizing agent. The CO2 was then mixed with H2 gas and reduced to elemental carbon before being analyzed at Lund University Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory using single stage accelerator mass spectrometry. Approximately 5 mg of carbon was produced, of which 3 mg was used in the analysis.


It sounds like they were using a piece of bone that hadn't been treated for the other tests (but to tell you the truth I'm not used to reading these kind of reports). And honestly I would have thought it's just bad science to use the same samples for multiple tests, the whole "the more you handle and process something the more you risk contamination" thing.


But you can read the whole source article at


PLoS ONE: Microspectroscopic Evidence of Cretaceous Bone Proteins

 

[Biblewriter]

According to the link they provided in their foot note Thye prepaired the sample thus :
14C analysis

In order to remove absorbed carbonates and humic acids, a small bone sample (2 g) was pre-treated according to the acid-alkali-acid method; i.e., it was washed in 2% HCl solution at 80°C for 12 h, then in 5% NaOH solution at 80°C for 5 h, followed by a final wash in 2% HCl. After this procedure, the dried residues (258 mg) were combusted to CO2 using CuO as oxidizing agent. The CO2 was then mixed with H2 gas and reduced to elemental carbon before being analyzed at Lund University Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory using single stage accelerator mass spectrometry. Approximately 5 mg of carbon was produced, of which 3 mg was used in the analysis.


It sounds like they were using a piece of bone that hadn't been treated for the other tests (but to tell you the truth I'm not used to reading these kind of reports). And honestly I would have thought it's just bad science to use the same samples for multiple tests, the whole "the more you handle and process something the more you risk contamination" thing.


But you can read the whole source article at


PLoS ONE: Microspectroscopic Evidence of Cretaceous Bone Proteins

Thank you for the link. This is indeed a full formal (and peer reviewed) report.

 

[iambeeman]

The link was at the bottom of the page.

Most of the ICR articles are based on that sort of report is my understanding.

 

[Papias]

You might want to be careful with that article. In addition to well known tactics of the ICR, the article has obvious quotemining (selectively reporting only part of a quote so as to trick the reader into thinking it says something that it doesn't).

For instance, the ICR article has this quotemine:
"yielding an age of 24 600 BP"

which they use to argue that the evidence, includingthe C-14 dating, shows a young age, less than 70 million years.

But reading the source paper shows that this is exactly the opposite of what was found, and evidence was cited to show why. Here's where they quote mined that line from:

Likewise, the amount of finite carbon was exceedingly small, corresponding to 4.68%±0.1 of modern 14C activity (yielding an age of 24 600 BP), and most likely reflect bacterial activity near the outer surface of the bone (although no bacterial proteins or hopanoids were detected, one bacterial DNA sequence was amplified by PCR, and microscopic clusters of bone-boring cyanobacteria were seen in places along the perimeter of the diaphyseal cortex).

So of course the C-14 is going to give a young age - they know there is modern bacteria in there, so when that is mixed with the old carbon, a result somewhere in between is obtained. It's no surprise. Saying that this shows a young age based on the C-14 is like saying that giving a kid ice cream, then taking his mouth temperature, proves that humans actually have a body temperature of 60 degrees!

It's sadly not a surprise that the ICR article quotemined. It's sadder still that some Christians will defend that lying, thus making Christian look immoral - which is at least as harmful as the Christians who are making Christianity look silly by claiming that the rapture will be tomorrow.

As Chrisitians it is our moral dute to point out lying when we see it, and be careful not to be fooled when the same group lies to us again and again. You know the old saying "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on ME.". The ICR has fooled us many more than twice, yet some of us are still going to them for information - which is practically asking to be fooled again.

Papias