Has carbon 14 found in fossils?

[Captain_Beefheart]

http://www.dinosaurc14ages.com/carbondating.htm

Im not a yec and Im very skeptical of this claim. Can you help me on this?

[Ophiolite]

I only scanned the piece. The argument appears to be: Carbon 14 dating is quite reliable out to about 80,000 years. All other dating techniques are seriously flawed. Therefore we cannot entertain the notion that, for example, the KT boundary is 65 million years old. Moreover, based on Carbon 14 half life there should be none of it in any specimens that are purportedly of that age, yet there always is.

 

It would take time to ferret out the citations to debunk this. I make one simple note. At one point the article declares: If as popularly believed most limestone formations are 500 million years old, then there should be no carbon 14 present in them. If this is a popular belief it is one that is seriously flawed, i.e. utterly wrong. Either the authors are incompetent and ignorant, or they are being intellectually dishonest. Either explanation causes me to doubt all of their other statements.

[Moontanman]

Dinosaurs, other than birds, all died far too long ago for carbon dating to be used. Fossils can be and often are, completely devoid of carbon (I should have said carbon from the original animal) being made primarily of calcium or some other mineral that replaced the bone.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

http://www.dinosaurc14ages.com/carbondating.htm

 

I read the entire article. lots of BS spattered into relatively accurate science. One of the biggest gaffs is the assumption that marine organisms can be accurately radio carbon tested, marine organisms get their carbon from a completely different sink than terrestrial animals and plants.

 

The idea that ancient bones can be radio carbon dated is also flawed, bones tend to be a sink for naturally occurring uranium and (i think) thorium as well. These materials generate Carbon 14 isotopes through neutron emission and absorption.

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=uyYd4G540lIC&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=uranium+in+ancient+bones&source=bl&ots=YGm3Z8z3AF&sig=RenBcBvqvxPLk5xHIHp1gXEZ3FY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wfsSUaKeFcOx0AXxloHgAw&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=uranium%20in%20ancient%20bones&f=false

Edited February 7, 2013 by Moontanman

[vampares]

With a half-life of 5730 years and a beta decay energy 0.15 MeV, comparing tritium which has a half-life of only 12.32 years and 0.0186 Mev.

 

I'm not sure if this is correct to rationally compare half-life and decay energy (beta-decay Q energy etc.)

 

0.000026178 C14

 

0.00150974 H3

 

57.7 time more easy to detect tritium. Fortunately the half-life of tritium would prevent it from contaminating the sample.

 

So starting at 1 part per trillion . . .

 

If someone were "out in the sun" for a period of time, it is usually easy to tell if it was recent or not, even how recently, but never quite accurately and precision is relative to the point of meaninglessness.

 

 

 

age = -8033 * ln (N/N₀)

N₀ is the original C¹⁴ atoms which is an assumed standard value

N is the C¹⁴ in the sample

 

N/N₀ years difference from previous

_{.9 846 to .9 .89 936 +90}

_{.8 1792 +946 .899 855 +9}

_{.7 2865 +1073}

_{.6 4103}

_{.5 5568}

_{.4 7360}

_{.3 9671}

_{.2 12,928 +3257}

_{.1 18,496 +5568}

 

.01 36,993

.002 49,921

_{.001 55,489 +5568}

 

Question would have is the degree of erroneous scintillation (provided the measurement is not botched). Just ten percent would err by what might have otherwise been considered meaningful.

 

ie between 1000BC and 0 BC.

 

10,000 to 13,000 years ago

 

Without erroneous scintillation the ages between 30,000 and 70,000 would available at relatively high accuracy. Of course this is looking at something that is now below the threshold of perception and the suspected contaminations. Beyond this there is really nothing.

 

Nothing is exactly what I might expect to find.

Edited February 9, 2013 by vampares

[John Cuthber]

Because of spontaneous neutron production by uranium, it's possible that C14 will be present in ancient fossils. But it won't be C14 that was present when the organism was alive.

[vampares]

Looks like the dates correspond to a range of .08 and .01 with one date at .13 and another at .7.

 

The .7 (2,560 +/-70) obviously stands out. It is not likely a dinosaur.

 

The other numbers are on the range of "old". The +/- dating is probably only indicating variation between separate measarments and is not taking into account the limitations of the carbon dating.

It may have rained on the archaeological dig site. This would introduce some carbon dioxide which would react with any free material. It would also introduce tritium. I am not sure what effect this would have.

 

Looking down the list there are two more anomalies:

1950 ± 50 (contam)

2,560±70 (contam)

 

This is interesting because all seem to fall in the same range. It is hard to believe that a sample could be contaminated nearly 100%. In all cases it is 70-80%.