How did they date "Lucy"'s bones ?

Question

does anyone no how they dated the missing link's bones

Answer 1

They are far too old for carbon dating.  The limit for C14 is about 45 thousand years.

Quote from this site

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/humans...

"How do we know when they lived? Estimating the age of hominid fossils is usually a painstaking, two-part process, involving both "absolute" and "relative" dating. "Absolute" dating means finding a specific age for an object. A sample of volcanic ash, for instance, can be given an absolute date of 3.18 million years old. "Relative" dating involves comparing one object to others to build a chronology. Scientists currently don't have a technique for dating fossils like Lucy directly, but they can assign these fossils relative dates based on the age of layers of volcanic ash found above and below them."

Answer 2

Dating Lucy was a problem, at first because the process of Potassium-Argon dating had not been developed. Carbon 14 was inadequate since it is limited to about 50,000 years owing to the half life of carbon.

In the last few decades argon geochronology has allowed accurate dating of strata as far back as about 4 billion years.

Now laser fusion dating is common place at such institutes as are qualified for the science.

So, "bones" are dated by dating the strata above, on the side and below the fossil. This method is quite accurate,

You may ignore the religious fear and hatred of isotope dating, such individuals have an agenda that bears no resemblance to anything akin to a fact.  They are to be ignored for any purpose having to do with academics.

Answer 3

I hate to tell you this, but there is no precise dating method. They are all based on the following assumptions:

1. The original content is known

2. The decay rate has remained the same

3. The sample has never been contaminated.

The only thing that can be known for certain is the current amount and the decay rate. Those can be determined empirically. You would then have to make the above assumptions to determine the age of the sample.

C-14 has a decay rate of about 5,000 years. The farther back you go, the less reliable it becomes. That means about 50,000 years max, even with the above assumptions.

To answer your first question, they dated Lucy by the layer of dirt they found her in. The problem is that the layers are based on the Geologic Column, which only exists in the textbooks. So, to restate my first sentence, there is no way to know how old anything is with any great certainty.

Answer 4

carbon dating..scientists can roughly determine how long it takes gases to decay and thats how they can find out. Theres carbon in the bones.

Answer 5

The hominid-bearing sediments in the Hadar formation are divided into three members. Lucy was found in the highest of these -- the Kada Hadar, or KH -- member. While fossils cannot be dated directly, the deposits in which they are found sometimes contain volcanic flows and ashes, which can now be dated with the 40Ar/39Ar (Argon-Argon) dating technique. Armed with these dates and bolstered by paleomagnetic, paleontological, and sedimentological studies, researchers can place fossils into a dated framework with accuracy and precision. Lucy is dated to just less than 3.18 million years old.