Triceratops Horn Dated to 33,500 Years Challenges Carbon Dating Method
It has been widely accepted by most people that dinosaurs died out around 65 million years ago due to a meteor shower. However, a new find means that this idea could be turned on its head and it might be possible that humans and dinosaurs once walked the Earth together not all that long ago. While others may call the notion that dinosaurs and humans were together absurd, it might not be as far from the truth, and many people think. Triceratops dated to 33,500 years ago In Dawson County, Montana, a Triceratops brow horn has been discovered and has been controversially dated to around 33,500 years ago, challenging the view that dinosaurs were extinct many millions of years before humans even existed. The Triceratops brow horn was excavated in May 2012 and stored at the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum until it was ready to be carbon-14 dated at the University of Georgia. Triceratops, a name that quite simply means “three-horned face”, is a genus of the herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur that is said to have first appeared during the late Maastrichtian stage of the late Cretaceous period, which was roughly about 68 million years ago in what is now North America, and became extinct in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event about 66 million years ago. However, scientists from the Paleochronology Group often conduct research relating to the “anomalies of science” and they continuously maintain the opinion that dinosaurs did not die out millions of years ago and that there is substantial evidence that they were still alive as recently as 23,000 years ago, this recent discovery included. This dinosaur horn is it unique though. A number of dinosaur bones have now been carbon-14 dated and they all returned similar results and were dated back thousands of years instead of millions as once previously thought. Carbon-14 Dating After the bone pieces were sent to Georgia to be dated, the sample was divided at the lab into two fractions with the “bulk” or collagen break down products yielding an age of 33,570 ± 120 years and the carbonate fraction of bone, bioapatite, yielding an age of 41,010 ± 220 years. Until recently, Carbon-14 dating was never used to test dinosaur bones, as the analysis is only reliable up to 55,000 years. Scientists never considered it worthwhile to run the test given that it is generally believed that dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years. Paleontologists were not just neglecting to test the bones for C-14 content though; they were outright refusing to do it. Something which has now been proven to not be a waste of time and may actually be quite useful. The most common and mainstream view that paleontologists and geologists have is that the dinosaurs lived from 220 million and 65 million years ago, during the Mesozoic Era. They also believe that Homo sapiens, the earliest form of human beings, did not appear until about 200,000 years ago which was in the Middle Pleistocene, Middle Paleolithic (Eurasia), or Middle Stone Age (Africa). However, along with the dating of the bones, there is other evidence that has led people to believe in Young Earth Creationism and they have pointed towards ancient artwork, such as the “dinosaur” carved at Angkor Wat, and the Acámbaro figures which even depicts human riding creatures similar to that of dinosaurs. Most people agree that this artwork was produced at a time before modern science had even begun to piece together dinosaur fossils and conduct analysis to gain insight into the way that dinosaurs might have looked. The video below explains a little bit about the carbon dating that has been discussed above. This is a very exciting prospect as something many have believed in for a very long time may turn out not to be true at all. While it is possible that an error was made or the samples were contaminated, the scientists involved took some measures to prevent this, and it is highly likely that similar results will be replicated in the future when more bones are tested. Failing to investigate significant findings like this would be scientifically criminal and would show that some researchers are more interested in holding on to the current perspectives rather than advancing knowledge about the world around us and what it used to be like.