In goes another nail: Pierolapithecus catalaunicus
- Thread starter Michael
- Start date
Fossils can be dated in many ways. What strata it was found in plus the measurements of K-AR and uranium decay rates can determine its age. Just the fact that 14C is at background radiation levels shows it is over 50,000 years old. Wheatever this thing is, it is old. Just the fact that they found petrified remains instead of bones tells you that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating
Yes, I know how Radiocarbon dating works. Of course you must be discussing today's background radiation levels as opposed to the background radiation levels at the time of the death of the monkey? Background radiation levels are actually changing from decade to decade - indicating that we don't actually know what the background radiation steady-state level is. I didn't see any indication that they had actually done any Carbon dating on this specimen - did you? For that matter, I didn't see any indication of any kind about how such a date was arrived at - no Argon, no Uranium (you're just making this up aren't you?Clockwood said:
)As indicated in the article, they were using a bulldozer when they found the specimen so they don't know what strata it was found in. In other words, no dating has been done (please correct me here) and the researchers are simply guessing. Maybe there is more information in the Science article?
Edit: I just looked at the article again, and I didn't see anything about the remains being fossilized? The article says they found teeth and bones! This is just another hoax, isn't it?
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David F.: How is it they know how old this find is? How do they know this is not just a modern monkey or one of the millions of recently extinct species?
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M*W: I'm sure they must do some kind of carbon dating.
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M*W: I'm sure they must do some kind of carbon dating.
David F.: I just looked at the article again, and I didn't see anything about the remains being fossilized? The article says they found teeth and bones! This is just another hoax, isn't it?
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M*W: For future archeological research, my bones will be dug up in Texas.
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M*W: For future archeological research, my bones will be dug up in Texas.
David F.: Funny Funny - thanks for the levity!
How old do you want science to say you are (pick a number, any number)?
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M*W: For the record, let the evidence show that the archeologists have exhumed the bones of a shapely and voluptous 28 year-old well-preserved female. Also found at the site of the dig was an ancient leather-like bag filled with crude tools that once were used for invasive entry into the human body for medical treatments. Attached on this bag were the ancient letters "M*W." We dated these crude instruments to be used during the age of advanced biomedical technological age, somewhere around the early part of the 21st century CE.
Also found at the dig site were three sets of bones that looked to be ancient animal carcasses which we have carbon dated to be from the same ancient time period. The animal bones fit the ancient description of what appears to be the species of Labarador Retriever, a tamed variety of canine.
The delicate hand bones of the still quite amazingly beautiful female specimen were found to be holding tightly onto an ancient plastic board with many push button-type characters with raised letters and symbols. Scientists have been unable to determine what this board was made of, but plastics were known to exist during this geological age. This plastic board of buttons has been studied, and it is assumed to be some ancient but unidentifiable communications tool. It appears there may have been a struggle, as the female was holding onto this plastic board when she died. Interestingly, nine of the mummified finger bones were still pushing several buttons on the ancient communications device. After thorough investigative studies, scholars in our ancient languages department have identified the mummified finger bones to be pressing the following characters on the plastic board -- s-c-i-f-o-r-u-m-s. We have turned the finger bones over as evidence to our ancient linguists to see if they can decipher this strange code. The ancient human bones from this dig will be called Medicine*Woman.
How old do you want science to say you are (pick a number, any number)?
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M*W: For the record, let the evidence show that the archeologists have exhumed the bones of a shapely and voluptous 28 year-old well-preserved female. Also found at the site of the dig was an ancient leather-like bag filled with crude tools that once were used for invasive entry into the human body for medical treatments. Attached on this bag were the ancient letters "M*W." We dated these crude instruments to be used during the age of advanced biomedical technological age, somewhere around the early part of the 21st century CE.
Also found at the dig site were three sets of bones that looked to be ancient animal carcasses which we have carbon dated to be from the same ancient time period. The animal bones fit the ancient description of what appears to be the species of Labarador Retriever, a tamed variety of canine.
The delicate hand bones of the still quite amazingly beautiful female specimen were found to be holding tightly onto an ancient plastic board with many push button-type characters with raised letters and symbols. Scientists have been unable to determine what this board was made of, but plastics were known to exist during this geological age. This plastic board of buttons has been studied, and it is assumed to be some ancient but unidentifiable communications tool. It appears there may have been a struggle, as the female was holding onto this plastic board when she died. Interestingly, nine of the mummified finger bones were still pushing several buttons on the ancient communications device. After thorough investigative studies, scholars in our ancient languages department have identified the mummified finger bones to be pressing the following characters on the plastic board -- s-c-i-f-o-r-u-m-s. We have turned the finger bones over as evidence to our ancient linguists to see if they can decipher this strange code. The ancient human bones from this dig will be called Medicine*Woman.
Ophiolite
Valued Senior Member
Careful David, your predjudice is in danger of showing.David F. said:
The normal way of dating a find like this would be, as Clockwood noted but did not emphasise, through recognition of which stratum it was in. You will doubtless be familiar with the useful concept known as the Law of Superposition. In general, older sediments lie beneath younger.
We can correlate given lithologies across miles and sometimes even continents. Since the lithologies may be asynchronous, macro-fossils and micro-fossils are needed to provide meaningful correlation across differing lithologies. The process gives us an excellent qualitative view of the relative ages of formations.
Absolute dating, achieved by one or other radioactive decay method, can convert this relative age to an approximate real age. The age in this instance was likely determined thus: we know the strata the find was in, and we know, by the methods described above the age of that strata.
You make something of the use of a bulldozer. The article makes it clear that the excavation had just begun when a tooth was found. This would have put a halt to the use of the 'dozer, so there would have been no problem in identifying exactly where the other bones were from.
Finally, "this is just another hoax isn't it?"
Well, no, I rather think not. What makes you think it is? And which other hoaxes are talking about. Please don't say Piltdown man.
KNEE SLAPPER!!!
you certainly are david, your one for the record books.
david do you believe the ice, in the north pole to have only froze last week.
or has it been a little longer.
have you heard of the petrified forest. is that also a couple of weeks old, what do you think?
you certainly are david, your one for the record books.
david do you believe the ice, in the north pole to have only froze last week.
or has it been a little longer.
have you heard of the petrified forest. is that also a couple of weeks old, what do you think?
It seems it's not as important how old these bones are, but their exact shape. Scientists can determine where in the line of evolution they fit just by the anatomical details.
I think fossils take only decades to form and they only form under one of two conditions (that we know of) - first is the animal or plant can fall into a tar pit (not that many tar pits around), and second, the animal or plant can be suddenly/quickly covered with lots of sediment and water - as in a flood. There is no other known condition under which fossils can form. In any case, it is not sufficient for the specimen to be covered just a little bit, it must be covered deeply - not as in the common conception of a few inches of sediment in the common geological misconception of a "strata". As the animal or plant decays under the right conditions, small pieces of rock may replace the decaying pieces and be cemented into place, forming a rock copy of the specimen - a fossil. For a whole forest to petrify (become fossilized) would require a massive and suddent region-wide flood (Noah comes to mind).
As for the polar ice caps, it appears that they may have formed, at least partially, prior to the "six days of creation". However, current estimates of growth or shrinkage rates should not be presupposed as typical since the Earth normally goes through hot and cold cycles. The Ice caps could have formed in a period of centuries given the right conditions. This is especially noticable when ice flow rates are measured. The current ice-flow rates show that the ice at the center of the caps should reach the edges in a matter of just a few centuries. The center ice has to be replaced by snow or other precipitation as the ice flows toward the edges. This process is in the millenia range, not something which take millions or billions of years.
As for the polar ice caps, it appears that they may have formed, at least partially, prior to the "six days of creation". However, current estimates of growth or shrinkage rates should not be presupposed as typical since the Earth normally goes through hot and cold cycles. The Ice caps could have formed in a period of centuries given the right conditions. This is especially noticable when ice flow rates are measured. The current ice-flow rates show that the ice at the center of the caps should reach the edges in a matter of just a few centuries. The center ice has to be replaced by snow or other precipitation as the ice flows toward the edges. This process is in the millenia range, not something which take millions or billions of years.
In that case, has anyone repeated these conditions? Shouldnt be too hard, theres plenty of rivers and such about. Then after a decade of waiting, you have a fossilised corpse to parade about proving that the archeologists are wrong.David F. said:
David F. said:
Really? Are you sure about that? And does that affect your claim about it only taking a few years for bones to fossilise?
Except that there are also parts of the ice cap where the ice cannot flow so easily, and are dated at ceratinly over 5,000 years old. And even if it happens over centuries, it can be due to other processes than divine intervention.David F. said:
I believe I said a few decades, not a few years, although you may be right and just a few years may be sufficient. In any case, the process cannot take any longer than it takes for the organic to decay. A few decades may indeed be too long a period of time. (I know if I leave meat out on my kitchen counter, it starts to decay pretty fast.) The rapid decay rate of organics is one of the reasons it must be deeply covered or in a tar pit - to seal the specimen away from air and thus slow the decay rate. If the organic decays too fast, the fossile does not have time to form.guthrie said:
Yes, I am sure. There are only two known conditions under which fossils can be formed. Perhaps you would like to bless us with a third option which no one knows about?
Do you know how Ice Cores are dated? There is no radioactivity to measure and no landmarks (timemarks) along the way. Ice dating is done in the same way that tree dating is done - by counting rings or layers. The problem of course is that you have to know how long a period is represented by the ring or layer. It used to be thought that tree rings represented a summer/winter cycle. It turns out that this is not true. Tree rings are laid down based upon weather patterns and wet/dry cycles. While some locations have only one wet season per year, others have two, or even the rare three seasons per year. In the same way, Ice Archeologists assumed that layers of ice were laid down as summer and winter layers but this is also turning out to be incorrect. Ice layers are laid down by storms and then sunny periods between storms. If a high precipitation storm comes through the polar region and then the sun comes out and melts the top layer of snow into an ice sheet, and then another storm comes through, a series of layers can indeed be established in only a few days or weeks - but the Ice Archeologists count each layer/cycle as an entire year, making the count significantly incorrect. Ice Layer counting, like tree ring counting, is turning out to be much more difficult then originally theorized. Thus far, no one (that I am aware, please correct me if I am wrong) has come up with a method for establishing how many storms per year come through the Polar Region and thus how many layers are laid down per year. Even if such a method could be established for the present conditions, what were the weather patterns like last century or last millennium? While Ice Layer counting is intriguing, it is still fraught with errors and unanswerable questions.
But, let's ignore these problems and use your premise. How is 5,000 years a problem? It fits nicely with the biblical creation story... but then, I didn't mention divine intervention at all, you did.
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As I have asked on other threads, how does the shape of bones determine evolution status? (I'm sure you are right and this is exactly how the age of the bones was determined).spidergoat said:
I could line up a set of dog breeds, from smallest to largest (Chihuahua to Great Dane) and claim that there are similar characteristics between the breeds thus tying them together as a species and showing that the size differences indicate an evolution change. The fact that all the dogs are still alive at the same time is incidental in the same way that you don’t care how old the bones are. My evolution chain is just as good as yours (even though everyone would know I was making a joke).
In truth, the age of the bones is of supreme importance since a younger bone can not possibly represent an ancestor. Unfortunately, there are NO DATING METHODS which have in any way been tested successfully on specimens of known age. Thus, for scientific purposes, there are no valid dating methods.
using dogs bad comparison, dogs have been inter breed for centurys by man, man sped up the evolutionary process in canines and felines and cattle and pigs and sheep, and chickens, use wild animals in your comparison that would make more sense.
oh but you cant.
oh but you cant.