South African fossils could be 'new human ancestor'

[highwaystar101]

Slimebeast said:

dtewi said:

Slimebeast said:
40% of a skeleton and they already know that "It was good in the trees and as good as us on the ground"?

And how they know it's 1.9 million years old? They picked up the thing on the savanna, from the surface (kid said he just turned over a little rock and the skull was there).

It's just stupid that they pretend to know so much.

Are you serious or being sarcastic?

It's called carbon dating.

Don't tell me, are you actually refuting evolution?

Serious.

Carbon dating ain't that accurate.

Refuting current evolution theory yes.

Come on Slimebeast, don't fall for the AIG myth of "All radiometric dating doesn't work, therefore all the data is useless". Of course the dating methods work to a more than adequate level; if they didn't then why would people use them?

Are dating methods 100% accurate? Of course not.

Are they accurate enough to be used? Yes, very much so.

Here's a video on the subject that explains it better than I can, start at around 2:20 and watch until the end.

Either way, I doubt this fossil was carbon dated, they would have used another method. Anyway, they can give the date of the bones to between 1.95m and 1.78m years, this prediction has accounted for the potential accuracy errors in dating and has not given a specific date, but a band of dates (source).

And as for finding them, the father has been a paleoanthropologist for 20 years and had been searching the area in question, it just happened to be that his son had came across the bones when out with him one day searching for fossils (which he commonly did). The father had specifically chose the cradle of humankind heritage site where the landscape is known for well preserved fossils. They have found dozens of fossils of animals, as well as several hominids, in the area previously. (source)