Radiocarbon Dating Failure on Ice Age Footprints

Down New Mexico way, there is a place called White Sands National Park because it has, well, white sands in the Tularosa Basin. The story goes that during the Ice Age, Lake Otero was in the Tularosa Basin. It was a nice place with a wet climate.

This area is famous for fossilized footprints, and the radiocarbon dating came up with an age of 22,000 years for one particular set from the Lake Otero Basin. Since rock cannot be Carbon-14 dated, seeds that were found in the area were subject to the analysis. It did not go well.

Lake Otero image cropped from NPS (usage does not imply endorsement of site contents)

Those seeds were not dated properly, and the radiocarbon atoms did not come from the ancient atmosphere but from old water. After recalculating, the age originally assigned had to be discarded. They were way off. Unfortunately for secular scientists, their desires for deep time and the methodology used raise several serious questions. Maybe if they get that correlation with the magnetic field going...

Radiocarbon dating seems like solid science. It appeals as a kind of time machine, providing a clear peephole to peer into the past. However, a new debate over ancient human footprints from New Mexico shows one way that this supposed peephole can get all fogged up.

You can finish reading by clicking on "Ice Age Footprints Step on Radiocarbon Results."