The 13,000-Year-Old Man Found On A California Island — And The Dating Test That Changed The Story Of America’s First Migration
The second complication is contamination.
Ancient bone is porous.
Over thousands of years, it can absorb carbon from its surrounding environment — carbon from groundwater, from the decomposition of surrounding organic material, from mineral sources.
This absorbed carbon, if it is younger than the bone itself, will make the bone appear younger than it actually is.
If it is older, the bone will appear older.
Good radiocarbon dating of bone requires chemical preparation — careful removal of the contaminant carbon to leave only the original biological material.
In 1959 and 1962, the chemical preparation methods available for bone were not reliable enough for the kind of very ancient, fragmentary bone represented by the Arlington Springs femora.
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