The center of the sinkhole has thin laminated sediments and extensive bone galleries. We sampled near here for MS-16-4 and MS-16-5 using metal tubes.
Creationists who seize on revisions in scientific dating as evidence that scientists cannot be trusted might want to read this particular example to the end. A famous mammoth graveyard in South Dakota has indeed been reassessed, and its previously accepted age has been substantially revised. Unfortunately for young-Earth creationism, the revision moves it much further into the past. An age already incompatible with the biblical timetable has become an even greater problem.
In a paper published in Quaternary Research, Shannon A. Mahan and colleagues report new dates for the fossil-bearing sediments at the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota. Long associated with an age of approximately 26,000 years, the deposit now yields luminescence ages of roughly 160,000–232,000 years — around six to nine times that familiar estimate. These are dates for the surrounding sediments, rather than direct measurements of each mammoth’s death, but they place the assemblage in a substantially earlier chapter of the Pleistocene.
How can a fossil’s age change so dramatically? A scientific date is a measurement of a particular physical process. Its reliability depends on choosing suitable material, understanding what happened to it after burial, and checking the result against other evidence.As described in Sandee Oster’s report for Phys.org, the site contains more than 60 mammoths, predominantly young male Columbian mammoths. The prevailing explanation is that a warm, spring-fed sinkhole became a lethal trap: animals entering the water could not climb back up its steep, slippery sides. Their remains accumulated in the basin. The earlier radiocarbon measurements were problematic because the bones lacked preserved collagen, leaving researchers to analyse bone apatite, whose carbon can be altered by interaction with groundwater.
What was dated originally?
The mammoth bones lacked preserved collagen — the protein commonly used for radiocarbon dating bone. Researchers therefore analysed carbon in the bones’ mineral component, apatite. However, interactions with groundwater can alter that carbon after burial. The resulting measurement may reflect later chemical changes rather than the animal’s death, making ancient remains appear much younger. This is a problem with the sample’s history, not evidence that radioactive decay is unreliable.
What does luminescence measure?
The new study dated feldspar grains in the surrounding sediment. Natural background radiation gradually builds up a trapped-electron signal within these minerals. Sufficient exposure to sunlight empties those traps, effectively resetting the clock. After burial, the signal accumulates again. Measuring it, together with the local radiation dose rate, allows researchers to estimate the time since the grains were last exposed to light.
Does that date the mammoths?
It dates sediment burial, rather than an animal’s death directly. The connection depends on geological evidence that the bones and sediment accumulated together. At the Mammoth Site, the main feldspar results place the fossil-bearing deposits approximately 160,000–232,000 years ago, although the detailed chronology still requires refinement.
Why trust a revised date?
Confidence grows through independent checks, not through refusing to change an answer. Here, analyses at two laboratories and comparisons with earlier dating work exposed weaknesses in the accepted chronology. Further uranium-series dating is planned. Revising an interpretation when better evidence becomes available is precisely how science improves its account of the past.
The new investigation used infrared-stimulated luminescence dating of feldspar grains, with analyses undertaken at two laboratories. This estimates the time since sediment grains were last exposed to sufficient light to reset their dating signal. The researchers also identify thin sediment layers deposited by runoff entering the pond. Uncertainty remains over the detailed chronology, and further uranium-series work is planned.
For creationists, the awkward point is not merely the increased age. It is how the correction was made. Scientists questioned an established interpretation, investigated the limitations of the material previously dated, and tested the chronology using a different physical process. If dates were simply manufactured to produce predetermined answers, why expose the discrepancy and publish a substantial revision? Here, changing the answer is evidence that the answer remains accountable to observations.
Nor does the resulting picture lend support to a single, recent global flood. A local sinkhole that trapped animals and accumulated successive sediment layers provides a coherent explanation grounded in the site’s geology. Invoking Noah’s Flood would require evidence that this explanation is wrong and that a worldwide catastrophe better accounts for the deposit; the mere presence of numerous dead mammoths does neither.
Even the old date placed these animals well before the supposed “Creation Week”. The revised chronology pushes them further beyond it. Science has corrected its account because the evidence required correction. The challenge for biblical literalism is whether it can do the same.
The paper in Quaternary Research was accompanied by a brief technical announcement from The US Geological Survey:
Luminescence Data for the Mammoth Site, Black Hills, South Dakota 2016-19
The ~21 m deep Mammoth Site (MS) bone bed site at Hot Springs, South Dakota, provides a unique opportunity to reconstruct paleoenvironmental conditions on the northern Great Plains of the United States. Past published radiocarbon analyses of mammoth bones found within the MS sinkhole suggested they were deposited ~23-42 ka.
However, two U-series ages ranging between 129-150 ka and a thermoluminescence (TL) age of 101 ± 10 ka suggested the bones were considerably older. We analyzed six samples from the bone bed using optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating; the ages ranged from ~130-255 ka, showing greater consistency with previous U-series and TL analyses. The OSL dating was on fine sand sized potassium feldspars in the middle “Phase II” section while the deeper colluvial gravels of the sinkhole bottom await renewed borehole drilling for a more complete analysis of the sedimentation record. In addition, we dated a late Pleistocene paludal proxy site using luminescence, incorporated those results with previous radiocarbon dating, and tested bleaching rates on modern sediments in the Fall River. Our new OSL ages also show that the sediments of the MS were well bleached prior to deposition, were derived from pond margin runoff events, and deposited as sandy-silt laminae couplets. The OSL and U-series ages indicate that a 6 m thick section of bone-bearing sinkhole sediments accumulated at a rate of 13 mm/yr and span all of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 and MIS 7 but not MIS 2 and 3 as has been previously published.
Study Area
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The Mammoth Site therefore presents young-Earth creationists with two related difficulties. First, even its formerly accepted age placed these animals well before their supposed “Creation Week”; the revised chronology pushes them much further into the past. Secondly, the correction demonstrates precisely the willingness to question established conclusions that creationists so often claim science lacks. Researchers identified a problem, tested the evidence and published results that substantially changed the accepted account.
The predictable response — “So scientists were wrong!” — misses the point. Scientific conclusions are open to correction because evidence takes precedence over preserving a preferred answer. Discovering that groundwater has compromised a particular dating material does not invalidate every dating method. It explains why that material can mislead, and why independent checks matter. An error detected through scientific investigation is hardly a triumph for a belief system that insists its conclusions must remain unchanged regardless of the evidence.
Nor does a concentration of mammoth bones turn this ancient sinkhole into evidence for Noah’s Flood. Repeated trapping and burial in a local basin provide an explanation that can be tested against the sediments and the arrangement of the remains. A global flood requires its own supporting evidence; it cannot be established simply by pointing to dead animals and declaring a catastrophe.
The remaining uncertainties concern the detailed history of a Pleistocene deposit, not whether these mammoths lived a few thousand years ago in a recently created world. Science will continue to refine that history. Biblical literalism’s problem is that neither the old interpretation nor its evidence-based replacement fits the story it requires.
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