Dave Alexander, a field technician for Paleo Environmental Associates, uses a hammer and chisel Thursday to chip around the fossilized pelvis bone of a mammoth in Moorpark, Calif.
Posted on 04/11/2005 11:51:17 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Fossil that stood 12 feet tall is far too ancient for carbon dating
MOORPARK, CALIF. - The remarkably well-preserved remnants of an estimated half-million-year-old mammoth — including both tusks — were discovered at a new housing development in Southern California.
An onsite paleontologist found the remains, which include 50 percent to 70 percent of the Ice Age creature, as crews cleared away hillsides to prepare for building, Mayor Pro Tem Clint Harper said.
Paleontologist Mark Roeder estimated the mammoth was about 12 feet tall, Harper said.
Roeder believed it was not a pygmy or imperial mammoth, but he had not yet determined its exact type, Harper said.
"It's considered a very significant find, and it's a very complete fossil. It's unusual because it was found all the way down near the bedrock," Harper said.
"We asked if carbon dating could be used and they said no way, it's too old," he added.
Harper said the first bones were spotted several days ago and a special crew was called in after Roeder found more remnants, including the 6- and 7-foot-long tusks.
"They've been encased in plaster and burlap and removed from the site," Harper said.
Moorpark in Ventura County is about 30 miles west-northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
"The Moorpark mammoth, that's what we'll call it," Harper said.
Other Ice Age creatures have been found in recent years around Southern California, including a mastodon in Simi Valley, a mammoth in Oceanside and a pygmy mammoth on the Channel Islands.
They must have had to dig down at least a mile into the earth to find something 500,000 years old. You know, all that sedidment and dust and volcanic ash.
Not to mention the acretion of cosmic dust.
Say WHAT?
A mammoth?
Sorry, but that's just nuts. There is no way a mammoth coule be "too old" for carbon dating.
The creationist elephants are already claiming that this couldn't have been an ancestor of theirs.
Get over it already...
LOL!
elefonts or exstink dinozoors? LOL!
I had to review carbon-14 dating myself, as I think I've temporarily exceeded my cranial storage and/or retrieval capacity , and am leaking like a SR-71 at sea level.
You probably don't need the ammo, but here's a link that might be, er, helpful to this thread How Carbon-14 Dating Works
The discovery is going to kill the contractor's schedule and budget.
Oddly enough, that's always my first thought when these things happen.
My first real jobs were in AE firms to pay my way through college, drafter, designer, plumbing, HVAC, EE.
I was in the AE engineering/design business for a while and know that the financing/build/occupancy cycle is always a critical part of the owner/engineer/builder triad.
I've also got a family member who's a pretty good GC.
A businessman might assume that the local authorities would provide for this kind of public domain intervention with compensation from state funds, but liberal environmental whacko's just aren't based in reality.
And why not?!? Evidently this specimen is about 500,000 years old, based on stratigraphy, I assume. C-14 goes back about 50,000 years at most...most reliably under 30,000 years ago.
LOL!
so much for that housing tract.......
I thought all the carbon data analysis' were debunked recently. I'll look for the article. Obviously no scientist on my part.
Yep.
"Lindsey said the bones were in the Saugus Formation, a soil layer between 400,000 and 1.8 million years old."A Mammoth Find in Moorpark
I think those wacky scientists should just go ahead and carbon date it anyway! Why not break a few rules. You only live once. (Besides, I'd like to know the results.)
FUCRE ping. Fouled Up California Real Estate.
There is nothing in the article as posted or in the source to indicate that it these remains are of such an age. I'm not even sure if 500,000 years makes any sense for mammoth remains.
Mammoth remains are usually found in recent landslides. Stratigraphy doesn't make sense either, for a a 500,000 year time window. That is too recent.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it the frictional heat (or lack thereof) that caused the Blackbird to leak. Not altitude.
Perhaps this is another example of your CSS (Cerebral Sieve Syndrom)?
;-)
Where else, besides Kalifornia, would one be required to have an onsite paleontologist on one's construction site? Or did this paleontologist just happen to be passing by when the remains were unearthed?
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