(June 8, 2025 at 9:47 pm)SubtleVirtue Wrote:(June 8, 2025 at 12:02 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: You can look in many of DK popular science books and see illustrations of how radiometric dating is done.
how does dating the nearest rock date the fossil?
By basic reason. Raisin bread can't be older than the raisins withn it and can't be younger than the slices that cur it. The same reasoning works for rocks. Fossils that are between two layers of volcanic material must be younger than the lower layer and older than the upper layer. Date the two layers of volcanic material and you have the age of the fossil bracketed. If the two layers are reasonably close together and your deposition rates aren't aburdly slow, the two ages will be the same, within error.