[HN Gopher] Mysterious 280M-year-old fossil is mostly just black...
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Mysterious 280M-year-old fossil is mostly just black paint
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-02-17 12:17 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| Xeyz0r wrote:
| Pls, explain. Is like everything fake? Didn't quite get that or
| skeleton is a real thing?
| leothetechguy wrote:
| skeleton is real, but too damaged to be recognizable, and the
| outline, previously thought to be carbonized skin or flesh, is
| fake, which means there's no way to properly identify it now.
| slimebot80 wrote:
| Is it a deliberate forgery, or a really old rock painting?
| masklinn wrote:
| According to TFA quoting one of the authors, it was likely
| a preparation (beautification) and / or preservation
| attempt which went very wrong.
|
| > Application of paints, consolidates and lacquers on
| fossil bones was the norm, because that was the only way to
| protect the specimens from further deterioration. It was
| also sometimes to embellish specimens by making them sleek
| and shiny. Unfortunately, in the case of Tridentinosaurus,
| the mechanical preparation did most of the damage and then
| the application of a black paint created the illusion of a
| lizard-like animal impression on the surface of the rock.
|
| That's not hard to believe if you watch restoration /
| preservation channels, like Baumgartner. Although obviously
| there's no way to tell what whoever did it was thinking at
| such a remove.
| im3w1l wrote:
| > Although obviously there's no way to tell what whoever
| did it was thinking at such a remove.
|
| Well there are some hints. Hint 1: The specimen wasn't
| officially described scientifically until 1959. Hence it
| seems neither the person who found it, nor the geologist
| he turned it over to seemed to want to cause sensation
| with a fake find. Hint 2: Giorgio Dal Piaz died in 1962.
| This means that he was alive (age 87) to protest when it
| was described scientificially and did cause sensation,
| but chose not to (though it's possible he was frail and
| demented I suppose). Hint 3: The person that found the
| fossil was a museum employee, this makes carelessness
| less likely, but could go either way for deliberate fraud
| I suppose.
| saalweachter wrote:
| It could just be the fossil equivalent of the Salvator
| Mundi restoration.
| mysterydip wrote:
| How did we know how old it was? I assume based on where it
| was in the stratum?
| verisimi wrote:
| Someone recently applied paint AND it was thought the fossil was
| 280m years old.
|
| It does rather carry a pall over the idea we can accurately date
| anything, doesn't it?
| blueflow wrote:
| You date fossils from the strata they are found in.
| miniwark wrote:
| But you also (partially) date strata from the fossils who are
| found in them...
| lawlessone wrote:
| >But you also (partially) date strata from the fossils who
| are found in them...
|
| And carbon dating.
|
| And decay of uranium into lead.
|
| They usually have multiple techniques that can be used
| together.
| kadoban wrote:
| Nit just because it's interesting (to me at least):
| carbon dating is never useful on things this old. The
| halflife of carbon-14 is so short that by about 50k years
| you're pushing it to about its limit.
|
| But yeah there's all kinds of decay chains and geology
| techniques used to date these things. It's a really cool
| mix of logical deduction and chemistry and cleverness.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Building on this, the general concept is _radiometric
| dating_ , which can rely on any of numerous decay chains,
| with half-lives ranging from decades to 100s of billions
| of years.
|
| Specific decay chains are effective clocks for differing
| lengths of time. Radiocarbon dating is often used on
| recent human or organic artefacts or remains, within the
| past 50,000 years or so as noted. It was uranium-lead
| decay which first demonstratively showed that the Earth
| was not "young", whether the few thousand years of
| theological textual analysis or the 30--300 million years
| that various geological estimates had suggested, but at
| least 1 billion years old, established by Ernest
| Rutherford in the early 20th centuries.
|
| The present value of 4.54 +/- 0.05 billion years was
| arrived at by the 1950s, based on the ratios of lead to
| uranium within zircon crystals, the latter of which
| cannot form in the presence of lead, and hence, any lead
| present necessarily being the result of radioactive
| decay. The measurement process _also_ demonstrated the
| extent to which modern industrial activity was creating
| pervasive lead contamination virtually everywhere,
| largely the result of leaded gasoline, one of Thomas
| Midgley 's lethal legacies.
|
| More generally, _geochronology_ is based on numerous
| methods of which radiometric dating is but one, though a
| quite powerful one.
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating>
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Earth>
|
| <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geochronology>
| SEMW wrote:
| ...No...? If someone puts paint on a 280 million year old rock,
| that doesn't change the age of the rock.
| a_gnostic wrote:
| Earth rocks are about 4.54 +- 0.05 Billion years old. The
| atoms comprising those rocks are *about 13.787 +- 0.020
| Billion years old.
| lazide wrote:
| The atoms themselves are far older, as they originated from
| some nuclear synthesis event in a star somewhere else
| (generally).
|
| Rocks on earth are rarely that old, as they're composed
| from sedimentation (aka they get weathered then deposited),
| metamorphosed (compacted and modified by heat and
| pressure), cool from a lava flow (basalt, etc).
| [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rock_types]
|
| Each of those forms/types changes fundamental properties of
| the rocks which allows for dating.
|
| Some rocks are literally only tens of years old, or even
| formed yesterday. Like basalt formed from lava from active
| volcanos.
| gghffguhvc wrote:
| Hydrogen and helium on earth would be 13.7 billion years
| old but many of the other atoms on earth are more like 4.6
| billion years old.
| shagie wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium
|
| > On Earth, it is relatively rare--5.2 ppm by volume in
| the atmosphere. Most terrestrial helium present today is
| created by the natural radioactive decay of heavy
| radioactive elements (thorium and uranium, although there
| are other examples), as the alpha particles emitted by
| such decays consist of helium-4 nuclei. This radiogenic
| helium is trapped with natural gas in concentrations as
| great as 7% by volume, from which it is extracted
| commercially by a low-temperature separation process
| called fractional distillation. Terrestrial helium is a
| non-renewable resource because once released into the
| atmosphere, it promptly escapes into space. Its supply is
| thought to be rapidly diminishing. However, some studies
| suggest that helium produced deep in the Earth by
| radioactive decay can collect in natural gas reserves in
| larger-than-expected quantities, in some cases having
| been released by volcanic activity.
| sophacles wrote:
| Most earth rocks are much younger than that. They get
| melted down, mixed with different melted rocks (etc) and
| form new rocks all the time.
| seventytwo wrote:
| No... we can (relatively) accurately date things using many
| different methods.
|
| There's no need to cast broad suspicion on scientific methods.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Eh, no, not really, because the article makes clear that this
| fossil has the rare combination of having been found before
| modern dating techniques existed, as well as having been
| treated extra carefully because of its "unique" status, and
| therefore avoiding some of those dating techniques until
| recently.
|
| > _How could scientists have presumed the dark outline was
| carbonized soft tissue for so many decades? "This fossil was
| discovered in 1931 and back then fossils were treated very
| differently than today," said Rossi. "Application of paints,
| consolidates and lacquers on fossil bones was the norm, because
| that was the only way to protect the specimens from further
| deterioration. It was also sometimes to embellish specimens by
| making them sleek and shiny. Unfortunately, in the case of
| Tridentinosaurus, the mechanical preparation did most of the
| damage and then the application of a black paint created the
| illusion of a lizard-like animal impression on the surface of
| the rock."_
|
| If anything, I am constantly blown away by how accurately we
| actually _can_ date things. For example, thanks to
| dendrochronology[0] we can now often accurately date _the exact
| year_ prehistoric wooden constructions like buildings or
| bridges were made, up to almost 14,000 years into the past! And
| that range will only increase.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology
| omega3 wrote:
| I find this article frustrating to read. Here are the important
| bits:
|
| > Conclusion: T. antiquus is a forgery [...]
|
| > Part of the fossil, at least, appears to be genuine--the long
| bones of the hind limbs [...]
| omgJustTest wrote:
| Summary: black carbon paint + organic binder was used to paint
| the fossil, as it was used in preparation of many early 1900
| finds. Fossil is partially real, with large amount of paint.
| Scientists for decades put up weird theories about new species to
| explain it.
|
| Science is hard, assumptions are easy, people have large
| imaginations &, most importantly, science rewards novel theories.
|
| Everything in the science record improves by people asking simple
| questions, its the day-in-day-out drudgery plus sheer luck that
| gets real discoveries.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Could this be entirely accidental then? one scientist or
| another person painting it, perhaps a bit haphazardly. Later or
| someone else someone else interprets this as soft tissue and
| the mistake just compound.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| _> people have large imaginations_
|
| There's a guy on youtube[0] that's convinced that every rock he
| sees is a fossil. His videos are a strange combination of
| absurd, disturbing, and relaxing.
|
| 0- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQnCueSlWLY&t=0s
| im3w1l wrote:
| If the preparation was poor quality but done in good faith,
| couldn't it be that the shape is actually somewhat accurate even
| though no fossil material remains?
| dmix wrote:
| Only the hind limbs are real, so no
| Aurornis wrote:
| The key part about why this was possible:
|
| > How could scientists have presumed the dark outline was
| carbonized soft tissue for so many decades? "This fossil was
| discovered in 1931 and back then fossils were treated very
| differently than today," said Rossi. "Application of paints,
| consolidates and lacquers on fossil bones was the norm, because
| that was the only way to protect the specimens from further
| deterioration. It was also sometimes to embellish specimens by
| making them sleek and shiny. Unfortunately, in the case of
| Tridentinosaurus, the mechanical preparation did most of the
| damage and then the application of a black paint created the
| illusion of a lizard-like animal impression on the surface of the
| rock."
|
| Combine that with the fact that part of the fossil is real (hind
| legs) and the extreme hesitancy to touch the sample due to its
| rarity explains how it got so far.
|
| I'm sure this story will be a favorite of anti-evolution zealots
| for decades to come. They love stories like this where scientists
| were wrong about something (ignoring the fact that they corrected
| the record publicly) because it helps them convince people that
| science can't be trusted.
| wredue wrote:
| They also tend to dismiss off hand the exact same science that
| is used to find the frauds.
|
| So when science find the frauds, the methods are good. When
| science originally classifies, the methods are bad.
|
| Unless, of course, we are talking about, yet another, ark
| discovery. Then the methods are simultaneously good and bad for
| a single instance.
|
| One think you will notice after some time here is that
| scientific articles that show facts counter to their narrative
| get flagged quite quickly, and anti-science propaganda meant to
| fuel distrust tends to have a very weird upvote to comment
| ratio on HN these days.
|
| The mods blame the sheer mass of these bot networks vs the
| amount of mods, but the mods also simultaneously and seemingly
| intentionally limit accounts that make attempts to dispel the
| obvious disinformation being pushed through this platform.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| > anti-science propaganda meant to fuel distrust tends to
| have a very weird upvote to comment ratio on HN these days
|
| I've not noticed that, have you any examples?
| liquidpele wrote:
| Been the same on Reddit for a long time too, there are
| definitely some weirdly automated things out there. I kind of
| suspect it's one of hundreds of campaigns by Russia/China to
| weaken western society by promoting conspiracy in every
| possible system for those vulnerable to it.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| This has been going on for 200+ years with young earthers
| insisting that fossils are fake constructs or were laid
| down in a single flood 5000 years ago.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| So we just have to wait 90 years for every scientific finding
| to be considered plausible?
|
| I'm ok with that
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Beats waiting 280 million years.
| mech422 wrote:
| Honestly, 90 might be a bit much - but especially in drugs
| I'd be happier with longer trials (5 years really seems a bit
| short to me - turns out we're always finding odd side effects
| 10-20 years later.)
| psunavy03 wrote:
| This reads like one of the fake headlines that used to scroll
| across the bottom of the screen while playing SimCity.
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