Retorts

Rating the Rating

In the article "Rating the Dating" by Nancy Beavan and Rodger Sparks [Sep 1997] there is a brief discussion of radiocarbon ages measured in rat bones from Shag River. At the end of the discussion there appears the sentence "A feature of all these bones is that they were highly degraded and contained significant quantities of contaminants that had to be removed."

Professor Athol Anderson has pointed out to us that this description of the bones is not supported by further analysis completed since September. We accept Professor Anderson's correction. The observation of a wide spread in radiocarbon ages in bones from Shag River is an experimental fact that eventually will be satisfactorily explained. It was not the intention of our article to imply that one set of results is more reliable than another, and we do not consider that this is the case.

Rodger Sparks, GNS, Lower Hutt