• Question: How does disolving a rock in acid tell you how long a dinosaur lived?

    Asked by gate49dug to Danny on 5 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Danny Hnatyshin

      Danny Hnatyshin answered on 5 Nov 2020:

      It a bit of a process! So when a dinosaur dies it get buried in sediment which then turns to rock. So you assume that the rock is the same age as the bones.

      Often these rocks have special minerals inside them the record how old the rock is. However, to determine how old the rock is you have to extract those minerals and chemically analyze them. These chemical analyses require a sample that is a liquid/solution. To create these solutions we use acid to dissolve the rocks!

      If you want me to go into details on how that works let me know and Ill try and answer it too.

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