How can the Earth be relatively young when scientists tell us that rocks are billions of years old?
|Print This Page| |Send to a Friend| How can the Earth be relatively young when scientists tell us that rocks are billions of years old? Textbooks, popular science articles and museum displays are always careful to include and even emphasize the age in Earth history in which early creatures lived. Just how do scientists know the age? Have they somehow determined the age of the actual fossil or the rock it which it was found? The true answer is neither. However, when pressed, geologists will argue that it is the age of the fossil that determines the age of the rock. How then was this done? Not by using fossil dinosaur bones or any other terrestrial creature but, it is said, with fossil seashells. So what physical method was used to determine the age of the seashells? None, and although loosely ascribed to radiometric methods, it was all done long ago by committee! Georges Cuvier was a Lutheran and product of the French Revolution. In 1812, after observing that the multiple rock stratum
