Carbon dating really did date living snails at 27,000 years old? LOL?

Question

You learn something new every day :)
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD011_3.html

Yes, I understand the explanation for it - I just found it amusing!

Answer 1

There are other sources of "old carbon" as well, these days -- we've been putting "old carbon" into the atmosphere via burning of fossil fuels in the last 300-odd years, so carbon dating will give a misleading result for anything that's been dead less than the 300-odd years.

Answer 2

1. Creationists who use this claim fail to note that the snails lived in an environment that did not have access to atmospheric C14 (a pool formed from a limestone sinkhole). The C14 that the snails did have access to was dissolved out of the limestone, itself, and as a result, was "old" C14.

2. The scientist didn't measure the living snails themselves. He measured their shells. The whole point is that the process through which the mollusks builds its shell (taking carbon from the water it lives in and NOT the atmosphere) doesn't "reset" the C14 "timer".

3. In the 1963 paper by Keith and Anderson Table 1 on page 634 gives 7 dates from 3 different samples. The first set of 3 results come from "Marine samples", the second single date is from a "Lacustrine sample", and the last 3 dates are from "Fluvial samples".

4. The Marine samples give an uncorrected mean C14 date of 155, the Lacustrine sample as 440 and the Fluvial samples give a mean uncorrected C14 date of 1733 with the highest of those being the date of 2300(+/-200) years old (being the only date which Kent Hovind mentions). The snails from rivers are not only deficient in C14 (as would be expected coming from a source, limestone, which has radioactively decayed and is not "recharged" like C14 in the atmosphere), but also were C13 deficient, explained by the concentration of leached humus in rivers and streams. What Kent Hovind does not mention is that these are the exact results we would expect since carbon in limestone (C14 deficient) and humus (C13 deficient) that has been leached into the water should be at higher concentrations at their source (the streams and rivers which the samples were taken) than in lakes and oceans downstream which are affected by cleaner sources and that some samples used for C14 dating will give incorrect ages when the organism sequesters most of it's carbon from water. The C14 dates in this paper are from these areas which contain "hard" water, heavy in dissolved solids from the surrounding landscape, and cannot be used to give accurate dates, which is the whole point of the paper.

Answer 3

"Living snails were carbon-14 dated at 2,300 and 27,000 years old, showing that the dating method is invalid. "

This is not a logical statement. One data point does NOT make for good logic. There are many reasons for faulty carbon dating--you would need thousands of data points to make that statement.

Answer 4

possibly it grew to become into on the subject of the religious perception that the Earth is only 60,000 years previous? *edit* ok, i found the object, and its approximately how carbon relationship innovations get much less precise the farther returned you circulate, by using fact the value of deterioration of carbon-14 isn't continuously precisely consistent and outdoors an infection or removing of carbon ought to impact consequences.

Answer 5

I had a date with a carbon one time ! It was sort of interesting but turned out to be old hat. I tried to get friendly but she said she would not do that on a first date.

I am still cleaning the soot out of my car !

Answer 6

Now see...Trish is just flat out lying. C14 can't return older than 60-100,000 years. It is outside the test parameters.

Answer 7

At least you understand that scientists know how and why such readings occur with some objects.

Answer 8

It is just not consistent.
But hey, no one uses carbon dating anyway.

Answer 9

Why do fundies mistrust the methods that scientists use to date fossils, yet blindly trust that the Shroud of Turin was correctly dated?

Answer 10

yes boys and girls and girls the living snail proves that we at least lived over 27,000 years oh and it also proves that we came from nothing billions of years ago, yes thats right boys and girls can you say BILLION? very good.. can you BELIEVE boys and girls that something came from nothing? Lets call that science and maybe some day you can teach it to all of your children.. can you say science? very good.. ahhmm..