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http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/carbondating.html

A YEC is essentially arguing that the allosaur bone incident here demonstrates the problem of C-14 dating and shows that C-14 proves earth is only thousand of years old. When pressed on the older dates, he says they're an "upper" limit... yeah, I can handle the second but what about the first claim?


Any reason why the fossil would show such young ages other than contamination?

Carbon-14 dating a completely fossilised bone, especially one that damn old, doesn't work. All the original stuff that made it up is gone, and has been replaced by other minerals that merely hold the shape of what was fossilised. You can't use carbon-14 dating to determine how old the fossil is because there's fuckall carbon in it to date. Not to mention that Carbon-14's half-life isn't exactly huge. Anything older than 45,000 old is basically not worth Carbon-14 dating at all. That's as accurate as we can get it.

C-14 dating, ALL forms of radiometric dating, are only applicable to certain age ranges. Once outside of that range, all of the shit that you would be testing for would have already largely decayed and thus testing is worthless for determining its age. I may be remembering parts of this incorrectly. Not a pro. Hoping someone will jump in to correct any mistakes or errors I make.

I think AronRa or someone else on Youtube tore this incident, or another incident like it involving Kent Hovind, apart and pointed out all the argument's flaws. I'll need to hunt for it on youtube, I guess.

The evidence for the age of the Earth and the Universe are overwhelming. The fact you can't reliably use Carbon-14 dating on a millions-of-year-old-fossil in which all of the original Carbon-14 would have already goddamn decayed doesn't do shit to prove a Young Earth.

I need help to explain why the result displays that. I suspect its contamination, but I know nothing else about it.

Okay. I'll break it down as best I can.

Carbon-14 dating can only be used to test biological substances reliably. And even then they have to be relatively uncontaminated.

Fossils are not biological. They are minerals, largely calcium. There would be nothing left of their original biological compontents, therefor they cannot be Carbon-14 dated at all, period. The presence of undecayed Carbon-14 likely came from much more recent (reletively speaking) flows of water with biological material in it or the like that would have depositied enough Carbon-14 to give a retarded reading like "omg it's 14,000 years old".

Doesn't mean shit. You can't use Carbon-14 dating on a non-biological substance. Any result can really only be explained through contamination, because a fossil wouldn't naturally have any notable amount Carbon-14 to test in order to determine its age.

In case this needs further explaining and your ability to google and wiki and whatever do not serve you well, or you'd rather just ask here, I'll expand further.

When carbon based lifeforms cease living, they'll have a certain amount of Carbon-14 in them. By testing how much Carbon-14 is in a biological sample, we can determine fairly accurately how old it is by comparing it to the rate of Carbon-14 decay. Non-biological substances would not retain the Carbon-14. Once something is fossilised, all the carbon is gone. You cannot take a fossil to be Carbon-14 dated and expect an accurate result. You can't expect any result. None of the Carbon-14 found on it could or would be Carbon-14 that was present when the sample was fossilized. By taking a fossil to be Carbon-14 tested the YECs in question are either being eliberately dishonest, knowing it will give a false result, or they're deeply ignorant of how and why Carbon-14 dating works and its limitations.

And now that I feel I have exhausted all of my knowledge on the matter and at this point would be either repeating shit I've already said ad nuaseum or repeating stuff I've read but do not understand, I'll step out of this thread and let those with superior knowledge field any further questions you might have and correct any mistakes I might have made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APEpwkXatbY#t=4m51s
Found it:D

What happened was that the fossils were covered with a preservative and the lab tested the preservative:D

I knew it was contamination:D

Thanks for the potholer source.

Darn, I dunno how I got AronRa and Potholer54 confused. Glad you were able to find the video in spite of the fact I was useless at doing so. It's the exact same video I was thinking of.