Hazards Of Dating Fossils By Association

[jpevahouse]

Interesting example illustrating the common problem of dating bones by association which are found out of context eroded in stream beds.

"In the early 1800s a human pelvis was found in Mammouth Bayou along with bones of extinct animals. This bone became known as the Natchez Man and became a debate which lasted over a hundred years as to the first human beings to arrive in Mississippi. Charles Lyell thought the bone had eroded from an Indian grave and mixed with older bones in the creek. Others agued the bone was as strongly mineralized as the bones found with it. This argument was only recently put to rest when the radiocarbon age of Natchez Man and a ground sloth bone found with it were determined using the University of Arizona's accelerator mass spectrometer. The results were: ground sloth 17,840 plus or minus 125 years old and Natchez Man 5,580 plus or minus 80 years (Hamilton 1990) Lyell was right Natchez Man was Archaic not Paleo-man."

Mississippi Dept of Environment Quality, Office of Geology, Circular 6, David T Dockery III, 1997

Edited September 18, 2014 by jpevahouse