According to papers filed with the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, when Mark Armitage interviewed for an opening at CSUN for a "regular" "part-time" microscopist in he told the panel that he had published materials supportive of creationism. William Krohmer, Manager of Technical Services and Safety, who would be Armitage's direct supervisor, was on the panel.
The panel hired Armitage despite his creationist writings because of his exceptional qualifications. The position was Electron Microscopy Technician in the Department of Biology, working two ten-hour days per week. He was "permanent part-time" and was allowed to enroll in the full benefits package of the university. He ran the Microscopy Imaging Facility with its three electron microscopes, personally training students and faculty on their proper use.
He was often praised for his work and accomplishments. The Biology Department bought a new confocal microscope that used high-powered lasers for imaging and was computer-driven. Armitage supervised the installation of the new microscope. He was assigned to be the only instructor on it, with responsibility for control and supervision of the instrument. In February , he was asked to teach a full graduate course in Biological Imaging for the Biology Department.
In March , Dr. Oppenheimer sent an email to staff saying that the two days per week that Armitage was working needed to be expanded in order to facilitate the growing demands of the microscopy lab. In June , Dr. Ernest Kwok was made chairman of the committee overseeing the microscopy lab, and became Armitage's new supervisor. In the summer of , Armitage responded to an invitation to participate in a search for dinosaur fossils in Glendive, Montana in the famous Hell Creek formation.
He found the brow-horn of a triceratops; it was not petrified. Studying the horn at the CSUN lab, he discovered soft tissue in the supposedly million-year-old or more fossil. While teaching students how to use microscopes in the lab that he directed at CSUN, Armitage engaged them in brief socratic dialogue about the possible age of the horn. Kwok's students was stunned by the discovery and implications of soft tissue in the triceratops horn, and told Dr.
On June 12, , Dr. Kwok stormed into Armitage's lab and shouted, "We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department! Armitage reported this to the Biology Department chair, Dr. They both played down the event and told Armitage to forget it. Praise for Armitage's work continued from distinguished members of the Biology Department. In November , a photo of the soft tissue in the triceratops horn was published on the cover of American Laboratory magazine. The former chair of the Biology Department, Dr. Oppenheimer, wrote a ringing endorsement of Armitage in a letter of recommendation.
On February 12, , the journal Acta Histochemica published a paper by Armitage describing the discovery of soft tissue in the triceratops horn. Acta Histochemica is a peer-reviewed journal of structural biochemistry of cells and tissue that welcomes advanced microscopical imaging; it has been publishing since On the day the paper was published, Dr.
Kwok called a secret meeting of the committee overseeing the microscopy lab.
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Armitage had served on the committee for three years, but he was not invited. The committee decided to terminate Armitage. On February 19, , William Krohmer told Armitage that there was a "witch hunt" being mounted against him, and advised him to resign. When he refused to resign, Krohmer told him he would be terminated.
Armitage was fired on February 27, He was told that his job had only been a "temporary appointment". There is a sidenote to this story. Hugh Miller, head of the Paleochronology group, obtained a bone sample from the triceratops horn Mark Armitage discovered. As you can see, the bone was dated by them to 33, years before present. The data for their four dinosaurs is below. A remarkable find was published in the journal Nature in April The "bone bed is characterized by the presence of completely disarticulated skeletal elements at various stages of embryonic development".
This made it possible to detect the preservation of organic residues, probably direct products of the decay of complex proteins , within both the fast-growing embryonic bone tissue and the margins of the vascular spaces. Our results clearly indicate the presence of both apatite and amide peaks within woven embryonic bone tissue, which should not be susceptible to microbial contamination or other post-mortem artefacts. Embryology of Early Jurassic dinosaur from China with evidence of preserved organic remains.
Radiocarbon RC or Carbon C dating of linen, cotton, bones, fossils, wood, sea shells, seeds, coal, diamond anything with carbon is one of the most common and well understood of the various scientific dating methods. Carbon is a radioactive isotope of carbon that is formed naturally in the atmosphere. All plants and animals have a regular intake of carbon while they are alive. When an animal or plant dies, it no longer takes in carbon of any form. C has a half-life of years.
The maximum theoretical detection limit is about , years, but radiocarbon dating is only reliable up to 55, years with the best equipment. Older dates are considered to be tentative. If, as generally believed, dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years, there should not be one atom of Carbon left in their bones. The accuracy of carbon dates depends on whether the ratio of Carbon to Carbon was the same in the past as it is today.
There are two types of C dating technologies.
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The original one, counting Beta decay particles, is a multistep process and requires sample sizes of several grams. Beta counting is prone to possible errors in each of the many phases. AMS uses a much smaller sample size, and actually counts the Carbon atoms as they are separated from the sample.
Can We Use Carbon 14 Dating On Dinosaur Bones
The equipment accelerates streams of charged atomic particles to high velocities in order to sort and analyze them. Carbon dating of bone is one of the most difficult tasks in carbon dating, and requires the most care of any carbonaceous material. This is mainly due to the nature of bone, which is a very porous material. Certain parts of bone look like a sponge under the microscope. Many dinosaur bones are hard as rock because the original material has been replaced with a silicon material such as quartz.
These are "mineralized" or "fossilized". We have found un-mineralized dinosaur bones. We then scrape the outer surface off to get rid of surface contamination, and date the inner remaining material. One can date just the purified bioapatite, the total organics, or the collagen, or a combination of these, as we did in several cases.
This is a remarkable find because collagen, being a soft tissue present in most animals, is supposed to decay in a few thousand years. Collagen is the main protein found in connective tissue of animals. It can make up from 1 to 6 percent of muscle mass. Triceratops and Hadrosaur femur bones in excellent condition were discovered in Glendive Montana, and our group received permission to saw them in half and collect samples for Carbon testing.
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Both bones were tested by a licensed lab for presence of collagen. Both bones did in fact contain some collagen. The best process Accelerator Mass Spectrometry was used to date them. Total organic carbon and dinosaur bioapatite was extracted and pretreated to remove potential contaminants, and concordant radiocarbon dates were obtained. They were similar to radiocarbon dates for ice-age megafauna such as Siberian mammoths, saber tooth tigers of the Los Angeles LaBrea Tarpits, sloth dung, and giant bison.
We usually prefer AMS dating because of its inherent superior accuracy, but use the conventional method when large samples are available in order to completely rule out contamination. This is recommended by a carbon-dating laboratory specialist. Robert Bennett, physicist and co-author, agree that "the AOGS-AGU assembly encourages presentation of reliable data even though the topic may be controversial. This is a very wise policy for the advacement of science and the education of people everywhere. Thus, we encourage our colleagues to do their own carbon dating of dinosaur bones from museums and university fossil repositories around the world, as well as testing for C in scrapings from dinosaur bones as they are excavated.
We are anxious to see their results presented, just as we have done. Also, we call on the news media and citizens everywhere to urge paleontologists, curators, university faculty, and government scientific agencies to encourage and support further testing for C content in dinosaur remains.
Scientists need to know the actual chronology of the Earth and the age of the fossils. Download pdf of data and commentary. More censorship by "scientists". Waldemar Julsrud, a German hardware merchant in Acambaro, Mexico, was riding his horse on the lower slope of El Toro Mountain on a sunny morning in July Suddenly he spotted some partially exposed hewn stones and a ceramic object half buried in the dirt.
He dismounted and dug out of the ground the hewn stones as well as a few ceramic pieces. Julsrud, who was archaeologically astute, immediately realized that these ceramic pieces were unlike anything that he had seen. The objects he held in his hand were distinctively different than any other known Indian culture. When a few ceramic fragments were found there, Julsrud hired diggers to excavate. This discovery brought world wide attention from archaeologists who at first mistakenly defined them as Tarascan, but later they were correctly identified as a whole New Indian culture - the Chupicuaro.
Julsrud at age sixty-nine was on the brink of making a discovery that may prove to be the greatest archaeological discovery ever made.
He hired a Mexican farmer, Odilon Tinajero, to dig in the area where the ceramic figurines were found and bring him any other similar objects. Soon Tinajero had a wheelbarrow full of ceramic pottery that had been excavated on El Toro Mountain.