Carbon-14 has a half-life of approximately 5,730 years.
Because it decays relatively rapidly, conventional radiocarbon dating has a practical range measured in tens of thousands of years, not millions. Therefore, dinosaur fossils conventionally dated to tens of millions of years ago should contain essentially no original detectable Carbon-14.
Yet measurable Carbon-14 has been reported from dinosaur fossils, and this observation is not confined to Young Earth Creationist publications. Peer-reviewed research by scientists who accept conventional geological ages has acknowledged the presence of measurable Carbon-14 in dinosaur bones.¹ ² ³
The disagreement is over what that Carbon-14 means —is it original material from the now-fossilized animal, contamination, or both?
CARBON-14 MEASURED IN CRETACEOUS DINOSAUR BONE
In 2019, Evan Saitta and a large multidisciplinary research team published a study in the peer-reviewed journal eLife titled, “Cretaceous dinosaur bone contains recent organic material and provides an environment conducive to microbial communities.”¹
This study is particularly significant because the researchers did not simply obtain a dinosaur specimen that had been sitting in a museum collection for decades. They freshly excavated Late Cretaceous Centrosaurus fossils from Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada, using aseptic procedures intended to reduce contamination. They also collected surrounding sediment for comparison. The researchers employed numerous analytical techniques, including accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon analysis.
The dinosaur bone contained measurable Carbon-14. The researchers stated plainly that the carbon in the dinosaur bone was “not radiocarbon dead.”¹
That is an important observation. According to the conventional geological timescale, Centrosaurus lived approximately 75 million years ago. Original Carbon-14 from an organism that old would have undergone thousands of half-lives and should no longer be measurable.
The researchers therefore did not interpret the Carbon-14 as establishing a young age for the dinosaur. Instead, they concluded that younger carbon had entered the fossil after burial.
THE MAINSTREAM EXPLANATION: YOUNGER CARBON ENTERED THE BONE
Saitta and colleagues found evidence of microorganisms living within the fossilized dinosaur bone. Their analyses indicated that the subterranean dinosaur bone provided an environment that supported a microbial community distinct from that found in the surrounding sediment.¹
Consequently, the researchers, not surprisingly, proposed that modern or relatively recent carbon had entered the fossil through microbial activity and other post-burial processes.
Interestingly, however, the authors found that the Carbon-14 concentration within the subterranean dinosaur bone was lower than that of the surrounding mudstone and topsoil. They suggested that the fossil might therefore contain a mixture of younger introduced carbon and much older carbon that was biologically inaccessible.¹
This does not establish that the dinosaur itself is thousands rather than millions of years old. It does establish something more limited but important: measurable Carbon-14 was present within carefully excavated Cretaceous dinosaur bone.
OTHER SCIENTISTS ACKNOWLEDGE THE SAME PHENOMENON
In 2020, paleontologist Philip Senter published “Radiocarbon in Dinosaur Fossils: Compatibility with an Age of Millions of Years” in The American Biology Teacher.²
Senter was writing specifically to counter Young Earth Creationist interpretations of Carbon-14 measurements in dinosaur fossils. Nevertheless, his paper acknowledges the underlying observation. He states that Mesozoic dinosaur bone can produce apparent radiocarbon ages ranging from thousands to tens of thousands of years.²
Senter argues that these are false ages produced when younger carbon-14 enters ancient fossil bone. He identifies several possible mechanisms, including recrystallization, bacterial activity and, in some circumstances, processes associated with uranium.
In other words, his argument is not simply that Carbon-14 has never been found. He argues, again not surprisingly, that the Carbon-14 being measured does not represent the age of the dinosaur.
WHAT ABOUT CARBON-14 IN THE ORGANIC FRACTION?
Senter returned to the issue in a 2022 paper, “Radiocarbon in Dinosaur Bones Revisited: Problems with Collagen.”³
This paper addressed claims involving Carbon-14 measurements from what had sometimes been called the “collagen fraction” of dinosaur fossils. Senter argues that this terminology can be misleading because the material being measured may actually represent a broader total organic fraction containing younger contaminants. These contaminants could include conservation materials such as glue as well as naturally introduced organic carbon.³
He proposes that a stronger test would isolate hydroxyproline, an amino acid strongly associated with collagen, before performing radiocarbon dating.
Again, the important distinction should not be missed. The scientific response is not simply, “There is no Carbon-14 in dinosaur fossils.” Rather, the argument is that measurable Carbon-14 exists but originates from younger carbon introduced into fossils after burial. The argument is that it must be contamination, but this is only a hypothesis.
THE REAL QUESTION IS WHY THE CARBON-14 IS THERE
These studies make it unnecessary to rely exclusively upon creationist publications to establish that measurable Carbon-14 has been detected in dinosaur fossils.
The observation exists in mainstream peer-reviewed literature. What remains disputed is its interpretation. Researchers working within the conventional geological timescale conclude that dinosaurs lived tens of millions of years ago and therefore interpret measurable Carbon-14 as contamination, microbial activity, recrystallization or other introduction of younger carbon into porous fossil bone.¹ ² ³
That explanation is scientifically testable, and it should be evaluated on the evidence rather than simply assumed.
The critical questions include: How much younger carbon has entered the fossil? By what mechanism did it enter? Which portions of the fossil have exchanged carbon with their environment? Can genuinely endogenous dinosaur organic material be isolated from younger material? And what happens when highly specific endogenous compounds are isolated and radiocarbon tested?
Finding Carbon-14 in a dinosaur fossil does not, by itself, prove that the dinosaur lived only thousands of years ago. Fossil bone can behave as an open chemical system, and younger carbon can enter it.
But we should also avoid the opposite overstatement. It is no longer accurate to dismiss detectable Carbon-14 in dinosaur fossils as something reported only by Young Earth Creationists.
Peer-reviewed mainstream researchers have measured and discussed it themselves.
The empirical observation is measurable Carbon-14 in dinosaur fossils. The debate concerns its source and what, if anything, those measurements can tell us about the fossils’ age.
A VERY REVEALING QUESTION: If researchers can identify and isolate endogenous dinosaur collagen, such as that identified by Mary Schwieitzer, why not purify a collagen-specific fraction and test it directly for Carbon-14? -4
SOURCES
¹ Saitta, E. T., et al. (2019). “Cretaceous dinosaur bone contains recent organic material and provides an environment conducive to microbial communities.” eLife 8.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.46205
² Senter, P. J. (2020). “Radiocarbon in Dinosaur Fossils: Compatibility with an Age of Millions of Years.” The American Biology Teacher 82(2):72–79.
https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2020.82.2.72
³ Senter, P. J. (2022). “Radiocarbon in Dinosaur Bones Revisited: Problems with Collagen.” The American Biology Teacher 84(6):336–341.
https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2022.84.6.336
4- Bertazzo, S., Maidment, S., Kallepitis, C. et al. Fibres and cellular structures preserved in 75-million–year-old dinosaur specimens. Nat Commun 6, 7352 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8352
