The Expanded Radiocarbon Program and What It Showed

The dense radiocarbon dating program reported in the 2012 paper is worth examining in some detail, because it illustrates how the approach to establishing the age of the Paisley evidence was fundamentally different from the approach used in the 2008 paper.

The 2008 paper relied primarily on direct radiocarbon dates from the coprolites themselves.

This approach has obvious appeal — dating the specimens directly is more powerful than dating associated materials whose relationship to the specimens might be questioned.

But direct dating of a small number of specimens, without broader chronological context from the surrounding sediment, is vulnerable to the objection that the dated specimens might not be representative of their apparent stratigraphic context.