4 ms·
Erroneous dating. "The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist ha
by locustsandhoney 6y ago
Erroneous dating.
"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling the explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results (American Journal of Science 276:51)." –J. E. O’Rourke
- adamjb 6y agoAnd the humble layman knows that this is resolved by radiological techniques being able to date things on the scale of billions of years.
- gus_massa 6y agoFor not circular methods, take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating#Accuracy_of_radiometric_dating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating#Accuracy_of...
- Yajirobe 6y agoFrom the article: 'after an organism has been dead for 60,000 years, so little carbon-14 is left that accurate dating cannot be established.'
- gus_massa 6y agoYes, carbon-14 is only useful for "recent" samples. The next section of the article discuss other radioactive materials that have a longer half life, and are useful longer ranges.
- rement 6y ago"As long as this cognitive process is acknowledged as the pragmatic basis of stratigraphy, both local and global sections can be treated as chronologies without reproach." (American Journal of Science 276:55). –J. E. O’Rourke The paper you cited actually goes on to show why the type of dating used is as accurate as it can be. Index fossil ages have been used to calibrate radiometric dating and vice versa. Not all rock formations have radioactive elements we can use to give rocks an "absolute age" meaning relative aging often is as good as we can get.