Dating fossils: How do you tell a dinosaur’s age?
No, this isn’t the set up for a prehistoric joke, finding the age of dinosaur fossils is actually an incredibly difficult task.
Although the dinosaurs roamed the earth for 165 billion years, no single species lasted for this long. Therefore, to work out exactly which era each beast lived in, palaeontologists need to look at the bones they left behind.
A variety of techniques can be used to work out the age of dinosaur fossils, including radiometric dating and palaeomagnetic stratigraphy. These methods have only enabled the age of the bones to be pinpointed to within 10,000 years, but with millions of years of history to play with, this is still very impressive.
However, these findings seem to have been ignored by the creators of Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, as we now know that many of the dinosaur stars of these movies would never have actually met in real-life.
Find out exactly how palaeontologists can tell the age of dinosaur fossils by watching the video below…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8VOh6UhS3E
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You can also take a look at:
T-Rex myths busted: What did Jurassic Park get wrong?
Interview with T-Rex Autopsy palaeobiologist Dr. Tori Herridge
