About “…buried in sandstone…” . . . I don’t recall which of Prof. Schweitzer’s articles mentioned this, but in one or two of them I recall reading the speculation that being buried in a somewhat permeable sand/sandstone may have allowed for the escape from the decaying carcass of the enzymes which are released from cells upon death which tend to tear everything apart. Whereas, burial in an impermeable mud/shale would have trapped these destructive enzymes in with the bones. I don’t know how much weight to give this proposal. The empirical observation was that the researchers found the best preservation in the sandstones.
I will offer another speculation, that burial in sandstone might be associated with rapid burial, e.g. if the dino got swept into a raging river which had sufficient velocity to carry large amounts of sand (not just silt), and then where the river emerged into a lake or sea and deposited the dino carcass, it would be rapidly buried and not torn apart by scavengers. Yet another speculation I have read is that unusual preservation of softer tissues may be associated with the carcass first drying out thoroughly in the desert sun, leading to much crosslinking, etc. , before it is later buried in sediments. There is still much to learn here.
Thanks for your remarks - I understand that much is speculation on this unusual find. I was more interested in how a rock may form after this specimen was encapsulated in some way. Ordinarily I would assume this is a slow process and the areas should remain undisturbed for a lengthy period.
I understand this is something geologists would comment. I have considered other substances that are formed after burial (eg, coal seems of 10-50 m deep, buried under 20-30 m of solid, are formed from vegetation - yet we are none the wiser on the physical activities that would ensure such seems are relatively free from soil and sand). I make this remark to illustrate the difficulties we may face when we examine events that occurred many million years ago.
" In contrast, the rates of nuclear decomposition of elements have been measured over and over again, and found to be essentially constant. As discussed in the main article, there are a few conditions where nuclear decay can be accelerated, but these conditions are known and predictable "-
not realy. first- we cant predict something that we dont know about it. in the past we dont know about “old carbon effect” that can make a living animal date about 3000 years. second- we know that an high heat can effect the radiometric acceleration up to 10^9 from the real age. and we know that this heat was in the past of the universe.
Your claim is completely false. The high heat that you claim can effect what you call “radiometric acceleration” is ONLY possible at the center of a massive star. Here on Earth, the planet you and I live on, temperatures never get into the millions of degrees (even in the summer) and never had in the 4.54 billion years of the planets exist. Earth was never massive enough to ignite the fusion process to generate the million degree temperatures to change the C-N-O process going on in the center of stars. Therefore nuclear decay constants are accurate to within 0.1% and your claims of making animal dates to 3000 years are bogus.
patrick. first- how do you know that the earth never get this temp? maybe its from a process thet make the whole starts somtime in the past in even may near the big bang time? second- even if its true- its just show you that there some natural process that can effect the radiometric method by a factor of one bilion. so how do you know there is no other process that exist and effect this process?
Because that temperature requires nuclear fussion! Earth isn’t massive enough to have gravity compress its core so that nuclear fussion can begin to generate the required temperature.
Earth was formed 4.54 billion years ago and never was there a process on Earth that could change the radioactive decay rates of ALL the elements naturally part of the Earth. So your claim that radiometric acceleration up to 10^9 from the real age can make a 125 million year old fossil date to about 3000 years is FALSE.
patrick. according to wiki its possible in starts:
"The most important fusion process in nature is the one that powers stars. In the 20th century, it was realized that the energy released from nuclear fusion reactions accounted for the longevity of the Sun and other stars as a source of heat and light. The fusion of nuclei in a star, starting from its initial hydrogen and helium abundance, provides that energy and synthesizes new nuclei as a byproduct of that fusion process. "
Yes, fusion goes on in stars, but fossil dating goes on here on Earth where there is no fusion going on. So the radioactive decay rates used for dating fossils is constant and very accurately known to about 0.1%. So when the authors says that a fossil was dated using radioactive decay rates of 125 million years, the accuracy of this results is ± 125,000 years. This is along way from 3000 years.
Reading your dialogue, it seems you missed what dcscccc said, which was that a “living” animal was dated as being 3000 yrs old.
Also, fossils are not themselves dated by radioactive decay. They are dated by their proximity to various rocks that are thought to be dated radioactively. Fossils are found in sedimentary rock, which itself cannot be directly dated.
Nope, not possible. Need millions of degrees to have the effect you talk about, earth never had the mass to ignite fusion to generate the high heat required.
That is what you should have asked dcsccc. I don’t know how it is possible. But perhaps the C14 method had a problem. I’m not sure where he got the information. Unless dcscccc mistated something.
With regard to your comment about igniting fusion, again I suspect you are not understanding dcscccc. If I understand him correctly, he is insinuating that the decay happened during the process of mineral formation at the time the earth was ejected from a hot star or something similar, not that the earth itself produced the high heat.
This is a quote from the abstract. There are replies to this paper as well in the magazine “Science”, but I do not have a subscription to it. The abstract indicates absorption of humus by mollusks, which could distort the C14 process.
> Consequent errors of shell radiocarbon dates may be as large as several thousand years for river shells.
I’m asking you why you don’t drill down to the evidence. Why is it all hearsay? Why did you claim elsewhere:
…when you know that in reality in this forum your MO is to avoid actual evidence in favor of hearsay? I can’t believe that you added emphasis with “actual.”