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From: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <608@psivax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Aug-85 15:33:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: psivax.608
Posted: Fri Aug  2 15:33:58 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 4-Aug-85 10:36:12 EDT
References: <387@iham1.UUCP> <14600030@hpfcrs.UUCP>
Reply-To: friesen@psivax.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Pacesetter Systems Inc., Sylmar, CA
Lines: 35

In article <14600030@hpfcrs.UUCP> lief@hpfcla.UUCP (lief) writes:
>>
>If an organism (fossil) is found in rock strata, and one wishes to get the
>age of the organism, what are the steps he goes through to arrive at a figure?
>My concern is that he would look at the age of the rock strata, and assume that
>since that organism was found within that rock strata, it too must be of the
>same age.  In otherwords, if I were to be buried by some inorganic matter that
>was 2 billion years old, and my fossils were found within this matter 1 million
>years later, would scientists be able to say that I was 1 million years old,
>or would they say I am over 2 billion years old?
>
	This shows little understanding of the actual conditions under
which fossils are found. Material incorporated into sediment while it
is still unconsolidated shows a quite different relationship to the
resulting rock stratum than would material inserted *after* the
sediment is consolidated. If you had ever actually watched fossils
extracted from sedimentary rock it would be obvious that the fossils
were incorporated in the sediment at the time of deposition, *not*
at a later time. Since the age of a sedimentary stratum is the time
since deposition, *not* the age of the source material, the kind of
error you are talking about simply can not occur.
	Of course if you *were* talking about being buried in new
sediment derived from billion year old source material you are again
totally unfamiliar with dating techniques. This factor is *routinely*
taken into account. That is why so few actuallly fossiliferous strata
can actually be dated *directly*, radiometric dating must be applied
to untransported material(such as volcanic rock)  to generate valid
results. The age of the sedimentary strata must then be estimated by
interpolation.
-- 

				Sarima (Stanley Friesen)

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