How much do X-rays and CT scans affect ESR dating?
The electron spin resonance (ESR) method of geological dating relies upon the idea that newly-formed solids (such as tooth enamel or igneous rock) are affect...
All posts tagged with dating
Link: New stratigraphy chart
The International Commission on Stratigraphy has released the 2018 version of Earth’s stratigraphic intervals, illustrated with a very helpful chart:
Reinforcing the antiquity of hominins in China
In Nature yesterday, Zhaoyu Zhu and collaborators published a paper describing the paleomag chronology of Shangchen, a site in Lantian county, China. The old...
What the revised Liang Bua chronology leaves unanswered
Thomas Sutikna and colleagues report a significant revision to the stratigraphy of Liang Bua cave, which changes the geological age estimates attributed to t...
From The Conversation: ‘Homo naledi: determining the age of fossils is not an exact science’
This is a reblog of my recent article on the Africa edition of The Conversation, “Homo naledi: determining the age of fossils is not an exact science”, which...
Is Little Foot really 3.67 million years old?
Darryl Granger and colleagues report in Nature this week on the date of the StW 573 specimen, commonly known as “Little Foot”, from Sterkfontein, South Afric...
The hominin invasion of China
Earlier this month, Scientific Reports included an article by Hong Ao and colleagues reporting a date for the Shangshazui archaeological locality in the Nihe...
Cro-Magnon 1, dating and mtDNA
I’m running through the new paper from Qiaomei Fu and colleagues Fu:revised:2013 about Upper Paleolithic mtDNA genomes. Probably several readers were wonderi...
Open science radiocarbon databases
Last week I wrote a lot about the radiocarbon chronology of late Neandertals in Europe (“Neandertals didn’t disappear before 40,000 years ago”, “Neandertals ...
Neandertals didn't disappear before 40,000 years ago
The science press has its own synchronized cycle, like brain waves, and being in Rome seems to make me into a misfiring neuron. Here it is tomorrow, and ther...
Combe Capelle redated
I missed this earlier this month, but Julien Riel-Salvatore did not: “Burial Site at Combe Capelle in France is Not as Old as Previously Assumed, by Several ...
Straightening the calibration curve
Michael Balter reports on a new radiocarbon calibration called INTCAL09. The calibration curve purports to provide a calendar age calibration up to 50,000 ye...
The paleomagnetic long count
A little off-topic, but interesting: Chris Rowan writes about paleomagnetic reversals and crustal movements some billion years ago.
Free the trees
Further drawbacks of databases in anthropology, after my post mentioning the issues. I’ll point to Martin Rundkvist’s discussion of “Open Source Dendrochrono...
The Pleistocene "land grab"
Holy stratigraphy, Batman!
Rats in the radiocarbon (or vice versa)
The story of the New Zealand rat bones is a bit deeper than the press reports (e.g., this AP report). The main idea is that the rat radiocarbon dates support...
An earlier initial Upper Paleolithic at Kostenki
A paper by Anikovich and colleagues in Science describes revisions to the Upper Paleolithic chronology of Kostenki, Russia.
Radiocarbon fudgery
I skipped last week's (9/15/2006) Science, and so missed this article by Michael Balter on radiocarbon dating. But some online discussion boards have been t...
Not a lasting last for the Neandertals
The latest in a long line of “last known Neandertal” sites is now Gorham’s Cave, Gibraltar. Of course, if this were actually a continuing string of “latest” ...