This post is about the recent footprints found in the dried up river bed in texas. I’m aware about carbon dating, but I thought you have to have organic material. And to add on top of that, wouldn’t the layer of earth that dates back be eroded/built upon by sediments in the river?
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There are two main methods. Absolute and relative dates.
Radiometric dating provide an absolute date and relative dating is possible.
Depending on the rock an absolute date may not be possible but if the rock layer they are in is near rock that can be absolutely dates then you can get a more or less idea. There are various different methods that will work in various types of rock. Like Carbon -14 it depends on what’s available in the rock. Something like Uranium -Lead dating takes the time it takes for Uranium to decay into lead to work out a time. Potassium -Argon Lead 208, Argon Argon and a host of other methods used for specific rocks.
There are mix of methods where an absolute date for the rock may not be possible but the age of the components of the rock can be found and the rock can’t be older than the older piece. Like a cake can’t be older than the age of the eggs used. Xenolith inclusions can be dated to absolute dates to help establish the age of rock without directly dating the rock in this method.
Relative dating works by using reference known dates. One method is index fossils, but this is slightly problematic as there’s always the possibility that the date range for that fossil is wrong. Now they only use very specific, previously very temporally specific fossils that are very well researched but there is always a chance it is wrong. This helps with narrowing down the range. If you can absolute date some rocks elsewhere which are missing from this site you can still use relative dates if you find something like a temporally significant find here.
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