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Hot take: Carbon dating isnt as reliable as everyone thinks it is
I was at a talk in Denver last fall and this grad student from Colorado State brought up a site where tree ring data and carbon dating disagreed by almost 400 years. Everyone in the room just nodded along like it was fine but I think we put way too much faith in those numbers. Has anyone else seen a case where the dates just felt off?
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dixon.spencer1mo ago
My uncle worked at a dig site in New Mexico back in 2007, and they sent some bones to three different labs for carbon dating. Two came back with dates around 10,000 BC but the third one said 9,200 BC. The third lab was using a new calibration curve that nobody had really tested yet. They argued about it for months in the journal articles but I think the whole thing just shows how much depends on which curve you pick. Some of those calibration curves are built from a handful of samples that might not even represent the whole world.
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cora_scott771d ago
Exactly this. When I was studying geology back in 2012, we had a sample from a peat bog that gave three different dates from three different labs. The calibration curves were the main issue, just like your uncle saw. Tree rings and carbon dating don't always line up, and that 400 year gap you mentioned is pretty common in certain time periods.
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