Machine dated at 400 million years found in Russia!

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by Chinaski (here)

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

Those into fossils know instantly these are crinoid "stem" sections, but for those that don't, they look like marvelously precise toothed gears from a machine.

"Crinoid stem sections???" did you just casually draw that from some easily accessible rolodex in your mind, Dennis? you realize that you've just indirectly confessed to being a gigantic nerd, right?

though it might make you a few bucks on Jeopardy one day.( "i'll take crinoid stem sections for a thousand ,Alex. <opponents audibly groan>)

hehehehehehehe Thanks, Chinaski!

Me? A nerd? Naw, if that was true, I'd have called the top of the crinoid a "calyx."

I think the main advantage to (probably) being ADD is having multiple interests to flit between. One was fossils.

Quick story:
About 25 years ago, I moved to Chicago from Southern California. (That is, I moved from relatively modern marine mammal fossils, like whale bone, to an area with quarries where I could go back in time 500 million years - if only I knew where to go and if only I could gain access.)

On a lark, I called the Field Museum of Natural History, and asked to speak with their paleontology department. I got some guy on the phone, told him I was new to the area, and asked him if he knew of any good places to go fossil hunting. He said, "Yes, but it is very difficult to get access." After a few more minutes of talking to him, he had offered to take me with him on a fossil collecting trip. At that moment, I didn't understand the significance of getting access into the property of the Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant grounds, built upon tailing piles from coal extraction. I would be going to "Pit 11", the premiere site on the planet (that I know of) for finding fossils of soft-bodied creatures, such as several species of jellyfish, marine worms, and a creature nicknamed a "Tully Monster." Pit 11 is to jellyfish fossils as Olduvai Gorge in Africa is to hominid fossils. If you've ever seen a dead jellyfish, stranded on a beach, after even a few hours in the sun, you'll know why nature preserving jellyfish fossils is kind of a miracle.

After a couple of trips collecting with this fellow (Frank Green), he invited me back to the Field Museum to look at fossils. I got to go into the back where the fossil preparators were busy slowly exposing fossils from the matrix rock. Then, we went down an elevator into a sub-basement. Hallways lined with drawers. Drawers full of fossils. Rare fossils. After allowing me to ooh and aaah for a while, Frank went to one specific drawer, and pulled out one specific fossil, and placed it in my hand. It was the "type specimen" - the finest example in the world of that species. I was holding the best preserved Reticulomedusa Greenei that had ever been found, handed to me by the man the fossil was named after.

Uh oh, does that confirm my nerdosity? Nerdus giganticus?

Dennis

[Chinaski]

any nerdus giganticus in pit 11?

awesome story. the chances of a guy from outta town getting that unique privilege as the result of a quick phone call...pretty cool synchronicity. i love hearing stuff like that.

i just googled the Reticulumedusa Greenei, and your post is already the 6th most popular information source listed. not a very popular fish, eh? LOL

if anything, that story reaffirms your 'hipness' in my book. besides, i can't really talk: i just recently had a funny back n forth with Borden over our comic book nerd-dom (oops, have i outed you Borden?!?) he's a marvel guy n i'm d.c., but we've decided to provide a fine example for the forum and the world by not starting world war 3 over it

[Mu2143]

http://www.sciencephoto.com/image/15...Pieces-SPL.jpg

http://www.thetruthbehindthescenes.o...ka01russia.jpg

http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/776...audonompha.jpg

http://northtexasfossils.com/fieldtr...9-crinoids.jpg

[Krullenjongen]

I am very curious on how they dated this artifact?
As far as i know you can't data the rock they found it in because it has been there much longer than the artifact and you can't data the metal either because that existed (in the rocks) long before the artifact was made from the metal.
So how did they date it?

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by Krullenjongen (here)
I am very curious on how they dated this artifact?
As far as i know you can't data the rock they found it in because it has been there much longer than the artifact and you can't data the metal either because that existed (in the rocks) long before the artifact was made from the metal.
So how did they date it?

Geologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists always want to know exactly where an object (rock, fossil, shard of pottery, bone, metal or stone tool, etc.) came from. There are other scientific methods than "carbon-14 dating" for determining the age of some objects, but that is the most common for objects that have carbon in them (such as ancient Kauri trees unearthed from a bog in New Zealand, or the hair of a wooly mammoth.) If there is no carbon, they can't measure how much the carbon has decayed, so the next best clue is exactly which layer of Earth the object was found in. Geologists have mapped-out much of the Earth (at least the inhabited and accessible parts), and know which layers are exposed in a given location.

Hard to believe that any Russian anthropologist would have confused crinoid stem sections for sentient, toolmaking beings' toothed gears "turned to stone", so I'll bet the original story has been greatly embellished - and made to sound more authentic by stating this was a find by anthropologists.

Dennis

[Unified Serenity]

I'd love to sit down over a cup of java with you Dennis and listen to some of your stories about these things. I'm fascinated by this sort of synchronicity of events that open these doors and the information that can be gleaned. Thanks for sharing this story, and explaining about the chinoids. I too just googled Reticulomedusa Greenei.

[Dennis Leahy]

Posted by Unified Serenity (here)
I'd love to sit down over a cup of java with you Dennis and listen to some of your stories about these things. I'm fascinated by this sort of synchronicity of events that open these doors and the information that can be gleaned. Thanks for sharing this story, and explaining about the chinoids. I too just googled Reticulomedusa Greenei.

Fire up the coffee my friend, but let's make a whole pot! And, for at least half the pot, I want to be the listener!

Dennis

[Delight]

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

Posted by Unified Serenity (here)
I'd love to sit down over a cup of java with you Dennis and listen to some of your stories about these things. I'm fascinated by this sort of synchronicity of events that open these doors and the information that can be gleaned. Thanks for sharing this story, and explaining about the chinoids. I too just googled Reticulomedusa Greenei.

Fire up the coffee my friend, but let's make a whole pot! And, for at least half the pot, I want to be the listener!

Dennis

United Serenity and Dennis...tape that conversation! The story you told about the Field Museum connection was fun and your facts are fine grained....

[aquamarine]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikyt...hanism#Origins





hello peeps i thought id add these links to an early machine discovered in greece that might add another route to this thread and thankyou for starting this thread alxz xxx blessed be aquamarine

[Osiris]

Yuri Gobulev of St. Petersburg University is a physicist not an archaeologist.

[TargeT]

Posted by Dennis Leahy (here)

Posted by Krullenjongen (here)
I am very curious on how they dated this artifact?
As far as i know you can't data the rock they found it in because it has been there much longer than the artifact and you can't data the metal either because that existed (in the rocks) long before the artifact was made from the metal.
So how did they date it?

Geologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists always want to know exactly where an object (rock, fossil, shard of pottery, bone, metal or stone tool, etc.) came from. There are other scientific methods than "carbon-14 dating" for determining the age of some objects, but that is the most common for objects that have carbon in them (such as ancient Kauri trees unearthed from a bog in New Zealand, or the hair of a wooly mammoth.) If there is no carbon, they can't measure how much the carbon has decayed, so the next best clue is exactly which layer of Earth the object was found in. Geologists have mapped-out much of the Earth (at least the inhabited and accessible parts), and know which layers are exposed in a given location.

Hard to believe that any Russian anthropologist would have confused crinoid stem sections for sentient, toolmaking beings' toothed gears "turned to stone", so I'll bet the original story has been greatly embellished - and made to sound more authentic by stating this was a find by anthropologists.

Dennis

"there are no answers, only choices"

The Sun is changing the rate of radioactive decay, and breaking the rules of chemistry
The Sun is changing the supposedly constant rates of decay of radioactive elements, and we have absolutely no idea why. But an entirely unknown particle could be behind it. Plus, this discovery could help us predict deadly solar flares.

It's one of the most basic concepts in all of chemistry: Radioactive elements decay at a constant rate. If that weren't the case, carbon-14 dating wouldn't tell us anything reliable about the age of archaeological materials, and every chemotherapy treatment would be a gamble. It's such a fundamental assumption that scientists don't even bother testing it anymore. That's why researchers had to stumble upon this discovery in the most unlikely of ways.

http://io9.com/5619954/the-sun-is-ch...s-of-chemistry