WRT to circular dating methods, I always think of the movie “Finding Nemo” where the stingray teacher is singing a song to the “kids”...
the words for the “daters” would go something like this:
“oooooooh, the rocks date the fossils
and the fossils date the rocks,
and we don’t really know if they’re
older than your socks!”
It’s that fossilized uranium.