‘Carbon-14-dated dinosaur bones less than 40,000 years old’ report scrapped from conference website

Carbon-14-dated dinosaur bones are less than 40,000 years old. Researchers have found a reason for the puzzling survival of soft tissue and collagen in dinosaur bones – the bones are younger than anyone ever guessed.  Carbon-14 (C-14) dating of multiple samples of bone from 8 dinosaurs found in Texas, Alaska, Colorado, and Montana revealed that they are only 22,000 to 39,000 years old.

Members of the Paleochronology group presented their findings at the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore, August 13-17, a conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS).

Since dinosaurs are thought to be over 65 million years old, the news is stunning – and more than some can tolerate.  After the AOGS-AGU conference in Singapore, the abstract was removed from the conference website by two chairmen because they could not accept the findings.  Unwilling to challenge the data openly, they erased the report from public view without a word to the authors.  When the authors inquired, they received this letter:

“There is obviously an error in these data. The abstract was apparently noot reviewed properly and was accepted in error. For this reason  we have exercised our authority as program chairs and rescinded the abstract .. will no longer appear on the AOGS web site.” Minhan Dai & Peter Swart.

They did not look at the data and they never spoke with the researchers.  They did not like the test results, so they censored them.

Carbon-14 is considered to be a highly reliable dating technique.  It’s accuracy has been verified by using C-14 to date artifacts whose age is known historically.  The fluctuation of the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere over time adds a small uncertainty, but contamination by “modern carbon” such as decayed organic matter from soils poses a greater possibility for error.

Dr. Thomas Seiler, a physicist from Germany, gave the presentation in Singapore.  He said that his team and the laboratories they employed took special care to avoid contamination.  That included protecting the samples, avoiding cracked areas in the bones, and meticulous pre-cleaning of the samples with chemicals to remove possible contaminants.  Knowing that small concentrations of collagen can attract contamination, they compared precision Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) tests of collagen and bioapatite (hard carbonate bone mineral) with conventional counting methods of large bone fragments from the same dinosaurs.  “Comparing such different molecules as minerals and organics from the same bone region, we obtained concordant C-14 results which were well below the upper limits of C-14 dating.  These, together with many other remarkable concordances between samples from different fossils, geographic regions and stratigraphic positions make random contamination as origin of the C-14 unlikely”.

The theoretical limit for C-14 dating is 100,000 years using AMS, but for practical purposes it is 45,000 to 55,000 years.  The half-life of C-14 is 5730 years.  If dinosaur bones are 65 million years old, there should not be one atom of C-14 left in them.

Many dinosaur bones are not petrified.  Dr. Mary Schweitzer, associate professor of marine, earth, and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University, surprised scientists in 2005 when she reported finding soft tissue in dinosaur bones.  She started a firestorm of controversy in 2007 and 2008 when she reported that she had sequenced proteins in the dinosaur bone.  Critics charged that the findings were mistaken or that what she called soft tissue was really biofilm produced by bacteria that had entered from outside the bone.  Schweitzer answered the challenge by testing with antibodies.  Her report in 2009 confirmed the presence of collagen and other proteins that bacteria do not make.  In 2011, a Swedish team found soft tissue and biomolecules in the bones of another creature from the time of the dinosaurs, a Mosasaur, which was a giant lizard that swam in shallow ocean waters.  Schweitzer herself wonders why these materials are preserved when all the models say they should be degraded.  That is, if they really are over 65 million years old, as the conventional wisdom says.

Dinosaur bones with Carbon-14 dates in the range of 22,000 to 39,000 years before present, combined with the discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur bones, indicate that something is indeed wrong with the conventional wisdom about dinosaurs.

However, it has been hard to reach the public with the information.  Despite being simple test results without any interpretation, they were blocked from presentation in conference proceedings by the 2009 North American Paleontological Convention, the American Geophysical Union in 2011 and 2012, the Geological Society of America in 2011 and 2012, and by the editors of various scientific journals.  Fortunately, there is the internet.

The data: Carbon-14 in dinosaur bones (download more details)

Dinosaur (a)	Lab/Method/Fraction (b,c,d)	C-14 Years B.P.	Date	USA State
Acro Acro Acro Acro Acro Allosaurus Hadrosaur #1 Hadrosaur #1 Triceratops #1 Triceratops #1 Triceratops #1 Triceratops #2 Triceratops #2 Hadrosaur #2 Hadrosaur #2 Hadrosaur #2 Hadrosaur #2 Hadrosaur #2 Hadrosaur #3 Apatosaur	GX-15155-A/Beta/bio GX-15155-A/AMS/bio AA-5786/AMS/bio-scrapings UGAMS-7509a/AMS/bio UGAMS-7509b/AMS/bow UGAMS-02947/AMS/bio KIA-5523/AMS/bow KIA-5523/AMS/hum GX-32372/AMS/col GX-32647/Beta/bow UGAMS-04973a/AMS/bio UGAMS-03228a/AMS/bio UGAMS-03228b/AMS/col GX-32739/Beta/ext GX-32678/AMS/w UGAMS-01935/AMS/bio UGAMS-01936/AMS/w UGAMS-01937/AMS/col UGAMS-9893/AMS/bio UGAMS-9891/AMS/bio	>32,400 25,750 + 280 23,760 + 270 29,690 + 90 30,640 + 90 31,360 + 100 31,050 + 230/-220 36,480 + 560/-530 30,890 + 200 33,830 + 2910/-1960 24,340 + 70 39,230 + 140 30,110 + 80 22,380 + 800 22,990 +130 25,670 + 220 25,170 + 230 23,170 + 170 37,660 + 160 38,250 + 160	11/10/1989 06/14/1990 10/23/1990 10/27/2010 10/27/2010 05/01/2008 10/01/1998 10/01/1998 08/25/2006 09/12/2006 10/29/2009 08/27/2008 08/27/2008 01/06/2007 04/04/2007 04/10/2007 04/10/2007 04/10/2007 11/29/2011 11/29/2011	TX TX TX TX TX CO AK AK MT MT MT MT MT MT MT MT MT MT CO CO

(a)  Acro (Acrocanthosaurus) is a carnivorous dinosaur excavated in 1984 near Glen Rose TX by C. Baugh and G. Detwiler; in 108 MA Cretaceous sandstone – identified by Dr. W. Langston of Un. of TX at Austin.

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