Well, close enough, anyways.
Check out a new article in National Parks Magazine about the planned-for, hopefully still on-track fossil beds national monument up on the northern end of Nor’Town over here.
Hard to imagine as it might be, the northern valley was once a hotbed of cutting edge science when a bunch of scientifical folk showed up to carbon-date all the bones up there.
This is, after all, where radio-carbon technology was born—an advanced method of dating fossils and artifacts. That breakthrough came in the 1960s, when the National Science Foundation sent an army of paleontologists, archaeologists, and geologists to Tule Springs to answer a single question: Were our ancestors cruising around with Ice Age mammals? Despite massive excavations, chronicled by National Geographic, scientists were never able to prove any interactions, and the Upper Las Vegas Wash simply faded into the background. “They packed up their tents, literally and figuratively,” says Lynn Davis, program manager for NPCA’s Nevada field office. “The area was all but forgotten.” (NatParks)
No humans found among the mastodons. Sounds like the sort of thing scientists might get all mopey about, don’t it?
You know, on second thought. you might not want to let that stuff about carbon dating get around too much. There are still a slew of folks who are upset about stuff like carbon dating ruining that ornate argument from Bishop James Ussher for starting up the world on Sunday, the 23rd of October in 4004 BC. By the Bishop’s reckoning, all those bones would have to be some kind of practical joke.
That’d be just what we need, a bunch of anti-evolutionists coming out north to take a few recreational pot shots out at the shooting park, get liquored up a bit at the Silver Nugget, and then start wandering around town shaking “Darwin is a Dodo” signs.
Then again, sounds like most any Saturday night in Nor’Town.
Recent Comments