Posted on 11/06/2011 4:23:51 PM PST by SunkenCiv
A fragment of human jaw unearthed in a prehistoric cave in Torquay is the earliest evidence of modern humans in north-west Europe, scientists say.
The tiny piece of upper jaw was excavated from Kents Cave on the town's border in the 1920s but its significance was not fully realised until scientists checked its age with advanced techniques that have only now become available.
The fresh analysis at Oxford University dated the bone and three teeth to a period between 44,200 and 41,500 years ago, when a temporary warm spell lasting perhaps only a thousand years, made Britain habitable.
The age of the remains puts modern humans at the edge of the habitable world at the time and increases the period over which they shared the land with Neanderthals, our close relatives who evolved in Europe and Asia.
Modern humans are known to have interbred with Neanderthals, leaving their mark in the genomes of many people alive today, and are implicated in their demise 30,000 years ago, perhaps by outcompeting them for food and other crucial resources.
The remains are close in age to the first examples of Aurignacian culture, exemplified by a range of artefacts from flint and bone tools to figurines and cave paintings that date from 45,000 to 35,000 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Not really a WAG. Methods such as uranium-lead dating of zircon allow for what theory suggests is an extremely accurate date, well beyond the age of the earth if necessary. I'm sure the Internet has a description, but the bottom line is that the method should be reliable. [Then you draw inferences from strata, and that may be risky, but at least the uranium-lead dates have a reliable basis.]
Clearly, you know more about this than me. I took my geology classes from the head of the Department of Earth Sciences at the U. of Leeds. When NASA sent the moon rocks around, they went to Leeds, marked for Dr. Hornung.
Half life of c14 is 5,000. It becomes increasingly more difficult to judge decay as time goes on.
Fortunately, humans really can't influence climate in any significant way or those morons would have us descending into an ice age prematurely.
If they decay is over 10 half-life's of the radioactive substance it becomes guess work when the half life started if you take into account all other natural variables acting on the subject. With CO-14 that is anything over 60,000 years it becomes questionable.
Myself and I am sure even SunkenCiv would like to hear why these bones are less than 1,500 years old.
The half life of C14 is 5568 years. It’s not more difficult to measure, there’s just less of it — which is why it is a nice way to measure things of organic origin which are younger than 50K years. Not surprisingly, most things that can be carbon-dated don’t reach that age, they vanish.
Struggle, I don’t appreciate being told what to do by you or anyone. I will continue to talk any way I wish to whomever I wish, and if you don’t like it, tough.
>>Struggle, I dont appreciate being told what to do by you or anyone. I will continue to talk any way I wish to whomever I wish, and if you dont like it, tough.
Just trying to help, noob.
Your controlled world view is being challenged... get over it, if you can! Your understanding of science is only what you were taught to think.
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