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"Finding a human bone in the Nefud Desert—a windswept oval patch of sand dunes the size of Kentucky—is perhaps the world’s most impressive example of an unlikel
by make3 9y ago
"Finding a human bone in the Nefud Desert—a windswept oval patch of sand dunes the size of Kentucky—is perhaps the world’s most impressive example of an unlikely find"
I wonder how you can test that a fossil wasn't just discovered elsewhere and moved to a convenient place, if the ground composition is sufficiently similar
- stevenwoo 9y agoCan't they do destructive testing of a part of the fossil using some isotope with a longer half life than carbon 14? It's described as being in a field of bones sticking out of sand so it's the only possible way it could have been accurately dated - no surrounding sedimentary rock formation to do additional testing upon.
- make3 9y agoDoes this address the problem of knowing if the bones were moved?
- jonhendry18 9y agoA nearby hippo bone was also tested. It seems rather unlikely that a human bone and a hippo bone of similar age would have been stumbled across somewhere else compared to this site which appears to be a dried up body of water.
- jonhendry18 9y agoThey didn't use carbon-14. "Groucutt and the rest of the team used a number of dating methods to confirm the likely age of the Al Wusta finger. For the finger itself and the tooth of an ancient hippopotamus found nearby, they applied U-series dating. Like radiocarbon dating, the method works by looking at radioactive decay in the preserved materials. The age of the sediments around the bones was calculated using optically stimulated luminescence—a technique that reveals the last time rocks and sand were exposed to sunlight."
- shard972 9y agoI'm not an expert in archeology but from my understanding, we can gain alot of information from bones that could lead such a finding. For instance, carbon dating and analysing the ethnic origins of the skeleton could lead you to say that you have an Australian (Australoid) fossil from 20,000 years ago. If you found that in Northern America that would raise serious questions about where exactly it was found and if it was moved since it doesn't fit within any of our current understandings of migration patterns.
- jonhendry18 9y agoUm, why wouldn't it have been useful to describe it as being found in the original location, in that case? It'd still be noteworthy.