Dating Question For Members

No, it didn't. Ground water containing dissolved minerals might have formed the fossil, if it was a replacement sort of fossilization event. Or surrounding sediments might have made a mold that preserved the shape of the leaf. But the anthill grains themselves didn't "form the fossil."And in answer to your topic title: no, Buz, I won't go out with you. I'm a happily married man.

True, in the strictest sense. But if that leaf hasn't had its original tissues replaced by minerals in, say, 50,000 years or so, there won't be a fossil left for us to see (unless it is perhaps a cast) after a few million years. A 50,000-year error in a date of 50,000,000 years is the same size of error as being an hour off in something that you remember from 41 days ago - early February. Not a deal-killer in the question, "when did this leaf fall." Patticularly when the leaf is of a sort that has never been found on a modern tree.

So did the pre-Fludde atmosphere have uranium, rubidium-87, and potassium-40 floating around in it? Carbon-14 dating relies on stuff in the atmosphere, yes, but the things that get used to date dinosaurs don't. And the contents of organisms don't have doo-squat to do with the ages of, say, Devonian rocks. It isn't the fossil itself that gets dated, Buz.