Advances and results in radiocarbon dating: Early man in America

Abstract

In the early days of radiocarbon dating bone samples were found to provide often specious dates when the calcium carbonate content of bone was utilized, since it is subject to exchange reactions with ground water carbonate. With the development of collagen‐based radiocarbon dating, a number of avenues of research opened up, one of which led to the dating of a number of fossil human remains found in Southern California. Dates for Laguna woman (17,150) years and Los Angeles Man (23,000) point to a much earlier presence of early man in America than had been thought. Moreover, independent amino acid racemization dates support these data.