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Old 01-04-2005, 01:22 PM   #32 (permalink)
1010011010
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Since others can't seem to let the carbon dating thing go...

Carbon dating currently has an upper limit of around 50,000 years. It also has a lower limit of about 150 years. The lower limit is due to the industrial revolution pumping a lot of depleted carbon into the environment. What it means is that the amount of carbon-14 present in recently dead organisms can also be consistent with the amount of carbon-14 present in things that died a lot longer ago. The exact "apparent age" depends on how much exposure to a depleted carbon source the specimen recieved as it lived and died. In short, carbon dating really is erratic for young things because the traditionally very smooth index of environmental C12:C14 has become erratic.

Carbon dating isn't the only radioisochronological method, though. And while there are recognized problems with all of them and ways to test and control for those problems... it gets pretty hard to claim they're all wrong if multiple methods agree on the age.

Oh, and C-dating, due to its 50Kya upper limit, has very little import on the evolution discussion and no relevance at all to a discussion of fossils.
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