Carbon dating dinosaurs

Triceratops bone carbon-dated to just 30,000 years old?

Abundant physical evidence firmly establishes that the earth is billions of years old Strachan et al. Nevertheless, the young-earth creationist YEC movement aggressively promotes the view that God created the earth about 6, years ago and that he independently created each kind of organism during the same week see, for example, websites such as answersingenesis. The YEC crowd has a lot to say about dinosaurs. Most of its dinosaur literature is a bizarre carnival of transparently unrealistic claims.

Some of the more entertaining such claims have been addressed and rebutted within the pages of this magazine, including the dinosaurs that tyrannosaurs ate melons Senter and had mammary glands Senterand that dinosaurs breathed fire Senter a and were still roaming Europe during the Renaissance, during which their recently killed corpses were publicly displayed Senter While much of YEC dinosaur pseudoscience is similarly difficult to take seriously, some of it bears a deceptive resemblance to actual science. Among its nuggets of intellectual pyrite are YEC studies on radiocarbon in dinosaur bones.

As YEC authors are quick to remind readers, radiocarbon has such a short half-life that no measurable amount of it remains in a specimen after a million years, much less after the sixty-six-million-year span that the youngest Mesozoic dinosaur fossils have your dating sims english share in the ground as we know from radiometric dating with isotopes of other elements; see Kuiper et al.

Radiocarbon carbon, also written as 14 C is a radioactive isotope of carbon. Cosmic rays continuously generate new radiocarbon in the atmosphere by knocking neutrons off atoms in atmospheric gases.

Much of that radiocarbon becomes incorporated into atmospheric carbon dioxide CO 2. During respiration, plants and algae take in radiocarbon from https://telegram-web.online/furry-dating-discord.php carbon dioxide.

Animals take in radiocarbon by eating plants or by eating other animals that have eaten plants.

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When an organism dies, it stops respiring and eating and carbon stops taking in new radiocarbon. The amount of radiocarbon in its body then drops as the radiocarbon decays into nitrogen without the loss being balanced by incoming radiocarbon. The decay of radiocarbon into nitrogen occurs at a known rate. Bone tissue includes a mineral fraction and an organic fraction, both of which contain carbon. Dinosaurs mineral consists of an array of positive ions and negative ions that are geometrically arranged such that they form crystals. The various names for this mineral include bioapatitecarbonated hydroxyapatitedahlliteand the nicely descriptive moniker bone mineral Senter The organic fraction of bone consists of blood vessels, nerves, sheets of the protein collagen around arrays of crystals of bone mineraland osteocytes the cells that secrete the collagen and the bone mineral Senter All organic molecules contain carbon atoms, and the carbonate ions in bone mineral also contain carbon atoms.

Because both the organic fraction and the mineral fraction of bone contain carbon, either of the two fractions can be subjected to radiocarbon dating. Radiocarbon has a short half-life, so after a few tens of thousands of years, there is too little of it left to be measurable. As a result, radiocarbon dating has an upper limit of about 55, years Reimer et al. The YEC literature is correct in stating that bones that are millions of years old have indeed lost all their original radiocarbon.

The older the remains, the less radiocarbon they retain. Such contamination is usually too small to significantly affect the dating of remains that are younger than about 10, years. Because of this, the influence of contamination on radiocarbon dating increases with the age of the sample. In samples older than about 10, years, the effect is pronounced. This means that although contamination is often not much of a problem for samples of historical age, it is a serious problem for fossil remains.

It is therefore very important to decontaminate a sample that is over 10, years old. Carbon, effective decontamination techniques exist for radiocarbon dating.

Double Your Impact!

Unfortunately, they do not work on bone. As we shall see, that is because bone behaves differently from other materials where radiocarbon is concerned. Such ion exchange is called recrystallization. In the case of bone mineral, recrystallization adds new radiocarbon via carbonate. Carbonate in groundwater is derived from dissolved atmospheric carbon dioxide and therefore contains new radiocarbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide Zazzo As carbonate ions in groundwater replace the phosphate and hydroxide ions in buried bone mineral, this incoming carbonate adds new radiocarbon to the crystal structure of the bone mineral.

The bone mineral is thus stuck with its contamination. Bone mineral that is younger than about 5, years can yield an accurate radiocarbon date because it has not yet undergone much recrystallization. Bone mineral is also protected from recrystallization if it is in an arid environment without groundwater or rainwater, which create dinosaurs aqueous medium in which post-burial recrystallization occurs.

But Mesozoic fossil bone has not been cremated, and it has lain in the ground too long to have avoided water. No place on earth has been arid long enough to have prevented recrystallization in Mesozoic dinosaur bone—not even within the short 6,year time frame of the YEC paradigm. Even the large swath of Africa that is now covered by the Sahara Desert was very rainy as little as 5, years ago Tierney et al. Besides, according to the YEC view, most Mesozoic dinosaur fossils were buried by the Genesis Flood, which means that even in the YEC view, they have been subjected to an aqueous environment that encourages recrystallization.

Recrystallization of bone mineral explains how YEC teams Dahmer et al. The recrystallization problem applies only to the mineral fraction of bone, not to the organic fraction. So if one separates the two fractions and subjects only the organic fraction to radiocarbon dating, one can circumvent the recrystallization problem. Unfortunately, one must still deal with the collagen problem.

Unfortunately, the collagen in buried bone tends to get contaminated by materials in the soil that introduce new radiocarbon. Fortunately, a decontamination technique called ABA acid-base-acid can be used to combat that problem. Unfortunately, ABA is not sufficient to decontaminate fossil bone collagen. That is because over time, bone collagen forms molecular bonds called cross-links with neighboring molecules from the humus and sediment that surround it van Klinken and Hedges Once a cross-link is formed, no decontamination technique can separate the collagen from carbon contaminants.

Another problem for the organic fraction of fossil bone is glue. Fossil bone is fragile. To keep it intact during the excavation process, excavators pour glue onto it and allow the glue to soak into the dinosaurs before continuing. It is a painstakingly slow process: expose a small amount of bony surface, pour the glue, wait for it to soak in, then repeat. As a result, it may take years to fully free a huge fossil skeleton from the sediment that entombs it. Meanwhile, the organic fraction of the fossil bone gets more and more contaminated by the glue.

Fortunately, such dating technique exists. Collagen is a protein, and proteins are made of smaller units called amino acids. The amino acid hydroxyproline abbreviated HYP is abundant in collagen and not much else. So if one extracts only the HYP and subjects only it to radiocarbon dating a technique called the HYP methodone can get an accurate carbon date for the fossil bone Marom et al. This, of course, will only work if the glue is not collagen-based. Another complication is that the bone must be younger than the upper limit free sites hispanic dating radiocarbon dating.

They thus avoided the problem of contamination via recrystallization of bone mineral. As we have seen, bone that is older dating 10, years cannot yield an accurate radiocarbon date except via the HYP method. The team did not use the HYP method, and therefore their radiocarbon dates for the dinosaur bones are falsely young.

Radiocarbon dating only works when you do it right. So far, no YEC team working with Mesozoic dinosaur fossils has done it right.

Dinosaur Bones and Radiocar-bunkum

InThe American Biology Teacher published an article of mine Senter in which I explained the problems with the mineral fraction of bone for radiocarbon dating. Wile posted a lengthy attempt at a rebuttal to my article Wile Its points are worth addressing, because future YEC writers are likely dating repeat them.

To the untrained eye, it appears to be a successful rebuttal, but the eyes of readers of Skeptical Inquirer who continue to the end of the present article dinosaurs be trained and therefore not so easily fooled. Dating facts : Wile does have a point in this case. Bone mineral that is dinosaurs than about 5, years often yields a correct radiocarbon date. However, the same is not the case for fossil bone, in which recrystallization is a serious problem for radiocarbon dating.

The facts: The Holocene Epoch is the present one. It began approximately 11, years ago Walker et al. The Pleistocene Epoch, which preceded it, began approximately 2. In that paper, Cherkinsky carbon that the technique cannot remove new radiocarbon in new carbonate that had arrived via recrystallization. Thus, Zazzo does show that the mineral fraction yields a falsely young age. The facts : The reference that Dinosaurs cites Miller et al.

The dates are consistently between 22, and 42, years which, of course, contradicts the YEC view that the world is only 6, years old. The facts : As I have personally observed through many years as a paleontologist, fossil bone is usually cracked in so many spots, so deeply, that a lot of the interior is as vulnerable to contamination as the exterior. Dinosaur bone mineral in uranium-rich hookup jessie hotshot saint incorporates uranium which replaces the calcium into its crystal structure via recrystallization, and the bone mineral gains new radiocarbon as the uranium decays.

To support that statement, Wile cites Bonvicini et al. The facts: The Bonvicini et al. Fossil bone concentrates uranium with great dating, and uranium concentrations can be one or more orders dating magnitude higher in fossil bone than in oilfield rocks.

As a result, the production of radiocarbon by uranium in the bone is expected to be orders of magnitude higher than it is in oilfield rocks. Bonvicini et al.

Dinosaurs, Dating, and the Age of the Earth

In contrast, the uranium concentration in uranium-enriched fossil bone is listed elsewhere as ppm in a carbon of the Jurassic dinosaur Dating30 ppm in another Dilophosaurus bone Table 1 of Goodwin et al. Similarly high or higher concentrations carbon uranium can just click for source present in uranium-enriched fossil shells up to 18 ppm; Table 1 of Ayling et al.

Senter must use false information to assure can dating geelong And readers … [that radiocarbon dating of fossil bone mineral yields incorrect results]. The facts : The information in my article came not from me but from my references. Essentially, Wile is calling those dozens of references false information. That is not surprising.

When it comes to the dating of fossils, YEC authors do not like correct results, because those results contradict the YEC https://telegram-web.online/old-ladies-dating-site.php.