techristian writes:
Yes, but I have also proved that it doesn't need to take "millions of years"
When scientists date fossils, they're trying to determine how old they are, not how long they took to fossilize. Consider the example of a dinosaur killed and buried in a volcano eruption. We'll assume local conditions allowed rapid fossilization, say within a hundred years. So now, just a hundred years after the eruption, the dinosaur bones are completely fossilized.
Sometime later scientists dig up these dinosaur fossils. Since they're found in volcanic layers they'll be very easy to date. Scientists will date the layers and arrive at an age of at least 65 million years. That's the age of the fossils, not the time it took them to fossilize.
All fossils begin as organic remains of a once alive organism. Fossilization is a gradual process of replacing the organic materials with minerals. Depending upon local conditions, that replacement process may range from very incomplete to totally complete. In other words, some fossils, particularly young ones, may still have significant organic content. In the case of frozen woolly mammoths, no fossilization has taken place at all, and the remains are still completely organic. In the case of most dinosaur fossils, the replacement process is complete and these is no organic content left.
When the fossil still has some organic content, then if it is younger than 50,000 years it can be radiocarbon dated. In many such cases there is no
14C left at all, indicating the fossils must be at least 50,000 years old.
--Percy