Can a fossil be used for absolute dating of the rock layer in which it is found?

Question

explain your answer

thnx

Answer 1

No. The iridium layer that is global was radioactive when it was deposited and artficially "aged" fossils.Read up on the catastrophist theories.

Answer 2

yes becouse of carbon dating or radioactive dating it can place the aprox time

Answer 3

No

Carbon dating is only accurate for up to 60 000 years.

Answer 4

Not usually. But not for the reasons given by those folks who seem not to accept the concept of radiometric dating or an old earth.

Most fossils just don’t have the right chemical composition for direct radiometric dating.

      The exceptions: For geologically young fossils, radiocarbon dating, measuring the decay of Carbon-14 has been used for fossils with organic material (like plants), younger than about 50,000 years.  Uranium-thorium series methods have been applied successfully to corals and bones up to about 700,000 years old (pretty young geologically).

Radiometric dating requires the presence of suitable minerals, most commonly found in igneous rocks and metamorphic rocks, but not fossils.  For example, the mineral zircon, formed in igneous rocks, is very well suited for uranium-lead or argon-argon dating. Therefore, absolute ages are usually measured on these types of rocks; the rock relations to surrounding rock layers with fossils may be noted. In this way, the time scale has been pieced together, comparing what is known about the "relative ages" of fossils (e.g., mammoths appeared after dinosaurs went extinct; dinosaurs appeared long after the very first land animals), and the "absolute ages" of underlying, overlying, or cross-cutting igneous and metamorphic rocks that can be dated radiometrically (e.g., 80 million years old). For example, the iridium-rich rock layers just above the last Cretaceous dinosaur fossils and Cretaceous marine fossils have been radiometrically dated at about 65 million years old (absolute age). So, the end of the Cretaceous is calibrated at this time in the most recent time scale. Volcanic eruptions sometimes left layers of volcanic ash between layers of fossil bearing strata. The ash can be radiometrically dated--which, for example, as helped scientists calibrate the absolute age of Jurassic Mesozoic rocks on the Colorado plateau (dinosaur country where the "relative" ages of various extinct species have been worked out).

Here's a simple time scale: http://www.britannica.com/ebc/art-1650/T...

For more techinical discussion of the difference between absolute and relative ages and the time scale: http://www.geo.ucalgary.ca/~macrae/times...

Answer 5

no, often things like earthquakes, glaciers, and other natural disasters can distort the rock to cause a seemingly different age group. still, it can give a fair idea.

Answer 6

Absolut dating is a pile of c**p and everyone knows it.

Answer 7

No it cannot.  Extra heavy rainfall which floods a river would cause more sediment layers to form and build up and the way that rocks are dated is by the deposits of sediment. If you account in the fact that we know of at least one ice age that would have had major effects on all the sediment deposits when it melted as everything would have shifted around.  That would mean that our dating could be off my thousands - even millions - of years.

Answer 8

no if the strata is compressed enough it can get flipped around

Answer 9

you could be able to determine the age of the fossil, and therefore determine the age of the rock layer in which it was found.