Radioactive carbon dating

First of all, the actual fossil is not dated. It is the surrounding rock that is dated.Secondly, it is the ratio of parent to daughter isotope that is used. For example, if you start with 1 g of uranium after 1 halflife you will have 0.5 g of uranium and 0.5 g of lead. If you start with 5 g of uranium then after one half life you will have 2.5 g of uranium and 2.5 g of lead. It is the RATIO that is important. Last I checked an hourglass is a closed system so the amount of sand in the hourglass is how much you started with. Lobsters get their carbon from marine sources which are richer in old carbon. This is what causes the older date. Scientists know all about this effect. This in no way negates the accuracy of carbon dating for terrestrial samples that derived their carbon from atmospheric sources. You are confusing perminerlization with burial. The process of replacing organic material with minerals from the surrounding rock is a slow process. However, no one is claiming that animals and plants can not be buried quickly.

All of these potential problems have been controlled for by comparing the carbon age with the actual age for samples of known age. These records include insects and leaf debris found in annual lake varves, tree rings, and captured CO2 in annual ice layers. These records are used to calibrate samples of unknown age.ABE: A member here, RAZD, has a really great website explaining these correlations. You can find it hereEdited by Taq, : No reason given.

I think "fossil" is loosely defined as a remanant of life found in the dirt. This can include fossils that are still almost entirely organic. I am pretty sure that charcoal from ancient human settlements found in the ground are considered fossils, and they are used to date the settlement.However, the use of "fossilized wood" does tend to indicate permineralization where the organic material has been replaced by dissolved minerals from the surrounding water table.

Can you get DNA from rock?"Nonetheless, recently developed DNA capture methods, already applied to Neanderthal and fossil human mitochondrial DNA, may soon make large-scale genome-wide analysis of ancient human diversity a reality, providing a fresh look at human population history."-- Analysis of ancient human genomes: using next generation sequencing, 20-fold coverage of the genome of a 4,000-year-old human from Greenland has been obtained - PubMedThe term fossil is used to denote organic remains in the peer reviewed lit, but then again this is more of a biology paper than a paleontology or geology paper. The wiki page references the Latin root which is fossus meaning "having been dug up". Completely agree. Even in common venacular there is an obvious difference between buried organic wood and fossilized wood. We all know the difference, and the difference is permineralization.