Took me a minute to get it, mostly because I didn’t realize the one with dark hair wasn’t a girl. I like it, though. I think children are often oversimplified by adults.

“If A candle burns another candle ¿is the same fire?” Budist saying

Religion, making things easy to understand since 7000 years

Fanatis and integrist, starting fires since 6999 years and 364 days

DanialArin-The problem with Carbon-14 is that it’s apparently usless after around 50,000 or 60,000 years, which is fine for some things but not for fossils. In general, most carbon-decay dating techniqes are no good for stuff old enough to be fossils because of the short half-life.

@D.G.: Actually, a “colleague” is someone in the same line of work, usually with a different employer, since otherwise the word “co-worker” would be used.

@Unsilenced: If the two pieces were the hard drive (including contents) and the motherboard (with a bunch of the device functionality on-board instead of on cards), that’s a rather overwhelming portion of the machine…

@ColdFusion: I think it’s more of a seepage thing. The mineral elements get more added to than replaced, and the organic remnants within the bone structure itself do not. The “atomic clock” starts when the critter dies and stops actively taking in and integrating new non-mineral (e.g. Carbon) radioactive isotopes. Besides, AFAIK the dating is usually done based on the surrounding soil, not the fossils themselves, particularly if it’s past Carbon-14 range.

@D.G.: Use of igneous layers assuming there was volcanic activity before and after to produce igneous. It should be noted that some types of sediment-generated stone might be viable for carbon-14 dating based on the organic content of the sediment, e.g. bacteria and other microbes.

Okay, according to a website run by Berkley, the fossil is in fact dated by looking at igneous rocks right above and below the layers of sedimentary rocks, which gives at least the age ranges of the fossils. The “atomic clock” apparently starts once the isotopes are locked into the crystalline structure of the igneous rock, which happens once the rocks cool below a certain temperature.