Why are index fossils used for dating rocks

Evidence About Earth’s Past (Book)
Contents:
  1. How do index fossils help determine age of rock layers?
  2. Use of Index Fossils
  3. Radiometric Dating with Index Fossils | media-aid.com

Kennedy addresses this problem. Contamination and fractionation issues are frankly acknowledged by the geologic community. For example, if a magma chamber does not have homogeneously mixed isotopes, lighter daughter products could accumulate in the upper portion of the chamber. If this occurs, initial volcanic eruptions would have a preponderance of daughter products relative to the parent isotopes. Such a distribution would give the appearance of age. As the magma chamber is depleted in daughter products, subsequent lava flows and ash beds would have younger dates.

Such a scenario does not answer all of the questions or solve all of the problems that radiometric dating poses for those who believe the Genesis account of Creation and the Flood. It does suggest at least one aspect of the problem that could be researched more thoroughly. The problems inherent in radiometric dating often cause them to be so unreliable that they contradict one another rather than validating each other. It would really be nice if geologists would just do a double blind study sometime to find out what the distributions of the ages are. In practice, geologists carefully select what rocks they will date, and have many explanations for discordant dates, so it's not clear how such a study could be done, but it might be a good project for creationists.

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There is also evidence that many anomalies are never reported. There are so many complicated phenomena to consider like this that it calls the whole radiometric dating scheme into question. Only then can you gauge the accuracy and validity of that race. We need to observe when the race begins, how the race is run are there variations from the course, is the runner staying within the course, are they taking performance enhancing drugs, etc. All bases must be covered if we are going to accurately time the race.

This is the major flaw in radiometric dating, e. Secondly, you must have an observable time span so we can be certain nothing has affected the amount of the radioactive element being measured, e. Finally, we need to be certain about the end or finish point. This is some finite point in the future. Without an accurate starting time, an observable span in between, and an observable finish, our measurement cannot be deemed accurate. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles, Rom 1: Beware of people who subscribe to a theory based upon naturalism and materialism exclusively.

If you blindly accept the Theory of Evolution, you are in danger of believing a fairytale for grownups called the Theory of Evolution. They point to minor changes within an organism, e. In reality, microevolution is evidence of adaptation, not a move up the phylogenetic tree of an organism with increasing complexity changing fish into amphibians, reptiles into mammals and monkeys into men.

The fact remains that every living organism appears abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed without the transitional fossils that should be there if Darwinian evolution is true. Get our latest articles, news, and offers emailed to you or sign up HERE for our free print newsletter.

There are at least elements in total. Some of those elements are stable, and some are radioactive unstable.

Radioactive elements are ones that, after a while, will spontaneously break down and turn into other, more stable elements. The nice thing is that this happens in a predictable pattern. The amount that decays into other elements can be predicted; the more years pass, the more will be broken down. By looking at how much of each element there is in a rock, we can trace it back and figure out how old those layers of rock are. Using this method, we've been able to figure out how old various rocks are and learn a lot about Earth's history.

Using these methods, we've even been able to figure out the age of the Earth itself: A related method we use to date rock is the use of reference fossils. Reference fossils are remains of long-dead animals and plants that lived at a known time in history. If we know from radiometric dating that an animal only existed for a particular period of a few million years, we know that whenever we see that animal in a rock face, that part of the rock must have that particular age.

How do index fossils help determine age of rock layers?

This also tells us that any other animals in the same rock, or the same layer, must have died around the same time. One thing that makes index fossils more useful is the way sedimentary rock is created. Many of the rock faces we look at were created layer by layer as sediments settled on a sea or lake bed. Because of this, when we look at a rock-face, we know that the bottom layers are the oldest, and that fossils parallel to each other along the layers of sediment are likely to be from the same era.

These rock faces often look striped, because different layers contain different materials as local conditions changed over millions of years. The most useful index fossils are from animals that existed for only short periods of time, and that are found over a wide area. They're useful because they give us a more exact date for a rock, and they can be used to date more rocks since they're common. Ammonites are a great example of an especially useful index fossil. Ammonites changed over time, so that ones from a few million years apart are never quite the same.

These fossils are found all over the place! Other examples of good index fossils include tropites, which existed only from to million years ago, and trilobites, which are useful in the same way as ammonites -- due to the large number of variations over time, even though they existed for a full million years.


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Tropites were similar to squid and octopus, except with a hard shell, and trilobites were a type of sea-based arthropod. Radiometric dating and index fossils are two methods we can use to figure out how old fossil-containing chunks and layers of rock are. Sedimentary rock forms layers as particles settle on sea beds over millions of years. When we look at a rock face, we know that the lower layers are colder.

But we can get more detailed information using these two methods. Radiometric dating is where we look at the amount of certain radioactive isotopes to figure out how old a rock is. We know the amount of radioactive substance when the rock was formed, and we know how fast it decays into other non-radioactive substances, so we can look at the amounts in each rock and use it to calculate how old the rock is.

Reference fossils are the remnants of dead animals and plants that we know existed at a particular time in history.

Use of Index Fossils

If we see one of these fossils in a layer of rock, this tells us how old that rock must be. An ideal reference fossil would be an animal or plant that only lived for a short time, but yet is found all over. To unlock this lesson you must be a Study.


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Index fossil Written By: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Learn More in these related Britannica articles: Ideally, an index fossil should be such as to guarantee that its presence in two separated rocks indicates their synchroneity. This requires that the lifespan of the fossil species be but a moment of time relative to the immensity of geologic history.

Radiometric Dating with Index Fossils | media-aid.com

In other words, the fossil…. They make excellent index fossils because they underwent rapid evolution and attained a broad distribution. The genera Pristiograptus and Cyrtograptus are pelagic graptolites characteristic of the Wenlock Series. As many as 42 graptolite biozones have been defined for the Silurian System. Each biozone takes the name of one…. Many ammonites are very good index fossils, but they are not perfect.

For instance, when Cretaceous stage boundaries were proposed in , the problems of correlating the boundary between the Campanian Stage and the underlying Santonian were examined. Thus, ammonites are a major tool for developing relative time scales and dividing the Jurassic into finer time intervals. Other common mollusks include bivalves pelecypods and snails gastropods.