FWIW, I'm a geographer with a geology minor; no "expert" but I understand the fundamentals of what I'm talking about.
If by magic 65M years newer material somehow fell down to much deeper in the earth, they would find human remains with dinosaurs. They don't.
I am aware of your education; which is why I won't jump into a debate on a disagreement. I do have a question though. I've seen studies where geologists aged a fossil; then later discovered it was older than the area in which they found it. How is that possible?
It's possible that an older fossil could be found in a younger layer of rock, but not vice versa without leaving some evidence of fragmenting or disruption of the older layer.
most polystrate fossils are simply larger than layer in which they would be housed, so a tree sticks up. There are areas where churning of the ground reverses order or lays over on itself, so the layers seem mangled, and in these areas it is very common for aging mistakes at first. But a more thorough overview of the area, a mapping of the layers, will quickly show this original aging was false. So the first aging is a best guess, and then more info comes in and a better guess, and then more info and you start to move away from a guess into actual fact.
Ahhh Okay I get you... So a fossil like a T. Rex; could make its way to a younger spot and still work in the age of the geologist; but the younger fossil cannot make it to the older spot without clues of other younger sediment being their as well?
Hey mags, I took a few geology classes about a decade ago and just loved them. I think you would too, it's a really cool puzzle to work with. Don't take the earlier comment as just a poke, it's actually pretty damn interesting. One of the more interesting one that actually seems to be offered at many colleges is Geology of the National Forests. So learning about stuff from Yellowstone to Arches. If you have time, you can even just audit classes at many schools, no homework and just a tiny fee, but you still get to do all the learning. I think it would be up your ally. EDIT: I think it's national parks.
I'll create two hypothetical scenarios for you. Older fossils in a newer layer of rock: Let's say a massive flood event hit the Natural History Museum and swept up all of the fossilized T-Rex skeletons and deposited them in a layer or silty mud. A million years later a geologist comes along and chips them out of the sandstone. His first guess is to use a relative dating method to order all of the fossils he finds there. Let's say he finds small mammals along side the much older dinosaur bones and initially assumes they are the same age. He then tests the bones with an absolute dating method using radiometric isotopes (not necessarily radio-carbon dating, but strontium, potassium, argon, etc. which all have much longer half-lives). He then discovers that the Dinosaur bones are much older than the mammalian bones. He would then determine that the much older material must have been exposed at some point and found its way into a different layer or rock ... but he probably wouldn't know about the Natural History Museum. Newer material in an older layer of rock You've been eating buffalo wings on your front porch and taking a lot of mescaline and you're wondering how you can get this chicken bone into the middle of this big boulder in your front yard without damaging the boulder. Fact is you can't unless you drill into it, split it in two or use the power of your mescaline enhanced mind to teleport the chicken bone into the center of the rock.
Glacier picks up fossil and moves it 1000 miles away where plate tectonics causes a mountain to appear and moves the fossil to the tip of the highest peak.
FWIW Mags, you seem to be really curious about this kind of stuff and I'm dead serious about taking an online course in geology or geography. Universities and community colleges offer introductory courses all of the time and you could even audit it.
Thanks man. I will take yours and Further's advice into consideration. I just have so much time invested in my current project right now.
