Radioactive Dating Game

My research focuses mainly on carnivore functional morphology. To date we have focused on using 3D dental microwear to evaluate the degree of hard object feeding in cats and bears. Directly linking radiocarbon ages with isotopic results permits the reconstruction of diet and ecology of the species and will help determine if they were influenced by changing climatic conditions over the past 50, years.

New specimens from a single deposit from Project 23 are currently being examined. Most of these insect species are still living today though not necessarily in southern California. They increase our understanding of the diversity of life in prehistoric Los Angeles and provide crucial information about the regional climate thousands of years ago.

Radiometric Dating. How radiometric dating works in general. Why methods in general are inaccurate. Why K-Ar dating is inaccurate. The branching ratio problem.

View images by clicking on link or reduced image: Each image opens into a new window. These primitive, medium sized apes lived in rain forests between 18 and 22 million years ago. This species and others such as Dryopithecus existed before the hominid line diverged on the path to humans. This lineage ancestral gibbons is believed to have diverged from the great ape and human lineages between 17 and 25 Mya Avers, Oreopithecus ‘s hand closely matches the pattern of early hominids, with a grasping capability including firm pad-to-pad precision gripping that apes are unable to perform presumably as a response to similar functional demands to hominids Moya-Sola et al,