How Old are These Mammoth and Mastodon Bones?

The premise of your question is false. The bones were not lying in an open field but were (mostly partially) exposed, probably due to erosion from Big Bone Creek. The bones had largely been buried in sediment and required excavation; Shaler, for example, in his late 19th century work wrote about digging through layers of modern day animals such as bison before reaching the mastodon bones at a greater depth. Creationist are spreading this "big lie" that the bones are recent. Don't be fooled by them.

Thos bones, and other nearby finds, have been extensively radiocarbon dated. The link below will provide you access to the Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia radiocarbon database.

http://www.crai-ky.com/education/reports/c14-database.html#Radiocarbon%20Database%20Report

Hello Frank12,

I am not sure where you got your ideas but they are flawed! As has been said these bones were not lying in a field for 11,000 years! Look into Paleontology a little more and you will find the details are fascinating and it is what you should do for yourself. Do not let others try and convince you. Do your own studies to check and double check details of anything. Good luck OK?

This is just a short section from research done by......Russell Graham.

Check out these details: www.museum.state.il.us/research/faunmap.

Russell Graham, a paleontologist with the Denver Museum of Natural History, is firmly on the side of climatic change as the key factor.Graham argues that a "flickering" climate during the Pleistocene Epoch maintained what he calls a "patchy heterogeneous environment" that disappeared along with the ice sheets.

The Pleistocene lasted for about two million years, and the climate was not uniformly cold during that time. North American warmed and cooled abruptly at times, and these changes maintained a fairly diverse environment.

But towards the end of the Pleistocene, Graham thinks that a final climatic flicker triggered dramatic changes in habitat that set off a wave of extinctions. The climate became warmer and more stable after the last Ice Age, and habitat in places like the American Mid-West began to change. Extensive short grass prairies gradually replaced a varied mix of habitats, including the open spruce park lands favoured by mastodons.

Using Geographical Information System (GIS) mapping techniques, they were able to document where different mammals lived during the last 40,000 years. They wanted to determine how different species dispersed as the climate changed. Did they move individually, or as part of larger communities?

They found that individual species dispersed at different times, in different directions and at different rates. This supported their theory about a patchy environment because it explained why animals that used to live together in similar environments are not found together today.

As the environment changed after the glacial retreats, animals that had once lived in the same habitats had to move to find suitable new environments. With Faunmap researchers can track how these communities split apart after the Pleistocene. Most small mammals dispersed to new areas, and few of them went extinct.

It was the large mammals that died off one after another. Large animals need lots of room, and Graham see their extinction as "a simple case of habitat destruction. The animals disappeared when their habitat disappeared and they had nowhere to go."

Older methods of radio-carbon dating indicated that Pleistocene mammals were still around as recently as 8-9,000 years ago. But relatively large samples of bone had to be used for these tests, increasing the likelihood that contaminants in the bone would skew the findings.

Now, Advanced Mass Spectrometry is used for radio-carbon dating. With this new procedure, very small samples can be used to date individual amino acids. These tests dated the bones at 11,000 years old.

The AMS tests also found that the distinctive fluted points used by the Clovis hunters were younger than had earlier been thought, dating to 10,800-10,900 years old. While this was only a difference of a few hundred years from previous theories, it was a critical shift in time frames. It meant that most of the large Pleistocene mammals were extinct even before the Clovis hunters were around to pursue them.

Mastodons and mammoths, the largest of all the Pleistocene species, died off a few hundred years later than animals like horses and camels. Graham assumes that these larger mammals were somewhat buffered from environmental changes.

Proponents of the human overkill theory often point to the fact that Clovis points are regularly found in the same sites as mammoth and mastodon bones.

But Graham has a different interpretation. He thinks these hunters were "stepping on the bones of the last mastodon," meaning that these mammals were already on their way to extinction by the time the Clovis people arrived on the scene.

With the preciseness of the new radio-carbon dating techniques, researchers have been able to determine that these mass extinctions occurred within a relatively short period of time, about 250 years. Graham points out that today we are once again seeing species go extinct at a rapid rate, and he thinks that we should not forget what happened 11,000 years ago.

"We're seeing a similar scenario today and humans are hastening the process. Paleontology has a lot to say about conservation biology. We need to protect corridors so that animals can move around."

He also warns that we should not assume that species will go extinct at a gradual rate. "I think we're going to cook along okay with a few species dropping out along the way until we hit a threshold level, and then there will be a major collapse. I think we are going down the curve very fast."

Graham is now working on a second version of Faunmap that will include data from Alaska and Canada. For more information on this project, check the Illinois State Museum web site at www.museum.state.il.us/research/faunmap. In the Yukon, the Beringia Center is an excellent source for information on this chapter of northern history.

Take care and have a wonderful holiday...............

I have spent little time studying ancient life from fossils, etc., but I understand that there have been several mastadons or mammoths (or the like) preserved basically "flash" frozen in ice. I am wondering whether it is technically possible to date the time frame of occurrence of their death from these sources.

Hello agua_doc:

Yes I recall watching a TV program about it. In Russia I think? Will do some searching and find out. I would have thought that, as long as there is hair at least with the frozen animal/fossil, there should be a reasonable chance to test it as you describe.

Interesting this, don't you think?

Take care and have a wonderful holiday.................

The 'open field' theory is nonsense and has been published alongside one that claims the Grand Canyon is 6000 years old. Sadly, these theories pop up every once in a while in childrens school textbooks most of which are 'donated' by some 'respectable' member of a community and who has a vested interest in sheep farming.

Which source of information are you using?

An early report on the bone find showed a sketch of the 'collectors' sitting on a huge bone. That might or might not have been accurate in the 1700s. Don't bones deteriorate quickly in wet soil?

Hello Frank12:

It is something to bear in mind yes.

I have found a site that mentions a baby mammoth in Russia. I am about to get my dinner but with send the site in shortly.

Very interest site from the BBC.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLJ_enGB294GB294&q=Wrangel+Island+mammoths

Not sure if the site about the baby is on here but you can check

Take care and have a wonderful holiday!

Depends on the soil. If acidic it would serve to preserve them. If calcium eating bacteria content is high I'd guess they'd degrade more readily. Exposure to the elements would reduce them to dust.

Hello Frank12,

These three sites are pretty interesting. The 'Museum' one is fascinating http://www.dkatantarctic.com/GiantIslandPygmyMammoths.doc

http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf087/sf087b18.htm

http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/mtrap.htm

Take care

Hi Frank12,

I once knew a guy who worked in a carbon dating lab and had the luxury of learning a little about the process of that time. The first guest who posted gave you some links; check out the online database. You'll notice that while the samples on the first page date at 11,000 BC near the top, by the time you hit the bottom of the page you're at 545 BC, bottom of the second page 510 AD. Addittionally, it is not clear what is being carbon dated in each sample. It appears that it may be charcoal, etc. from the area surrounding the find.

I honestly have no idea when the mamoths died off, but ironically, it appears most scientist don't either. Carbon dating can only date "once living objects" that are up to 35-50 thousand years old. After 50k all carbon 14 is broken down. For this reason scientists use different dating techniques for dinosaur fossils etc. They assume an age older than 50k and skip carbon C14 dating. When an object is going to be carbon dated, the dating is calibrated according to an "expected time frame". So much for a blind test.

The point; you do need to be skeptical about info you pick up by hearsay until proven accurate, but that applies equally to all sources including evolutionists whose grants rely on the belief that evolution occurred over 100's of millions of years. In real science, you postulate a hypothesis, search for evidence that either anulls your hypothesis or confirms it and elevates it to theory. You do not disregard evidence that is contradictory to your beliefs (without addressing it) and twist evidence to suite your religous needs. That being said, while I myself lead toward a creationalist / young earth position, I think both creationalists and evolutionists are guilty of twisting evidence to suit their needs. One side takes an extreme position, and the other side counters in similar fashion, kind of like politics.

Guest,

I believe your points are subtly influenced by religious beliefs. Young earth creationists use some of the arguments you do (difficulty with radiocarbon dating, no absolute method, etc) without revealing that their arguments are very outdated. The link below gives a fairly good review of more modern standards.

http://nvl.nist.gov/pub/nistpubs/jres/109/2/j92cur.pdf

Whatever your religious beliefs (I personally believe in a generational god), the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. Specific mechanisms may still be in question; the overall fact is not.

She was as false as water. - Othello