Chronometric techniques include radiometric dating and radio-carbon dating, which both determine the age of materials through the decay of their radioactive elements; dendrochronology, which dates events and environmental conditions by studying tree growth rings; fluorine testing, which dates bones by calculating their fluorine content; pollen analysis, which identifies the number and type of pollen in a sample to place it in the correct historical period; and thermoluminescence, which dates ceramic materials by measuring their stored energy.

In fact, Archbishop Usher of Ireland calculated that the Earth was created at 9 AM on It was believed that prior to the Great Flood, Earths surface was flat and its climate was mild.

New discoveries have filled in the gaps, and shown us in unimaginable detail the shape of the great ‘tree of life’.

Darwin and his contemporaries could never have imagined the improvements in resolution of stratigraphy that have come since 1859, nor guessed what fossils were to be found in the southern continents, nor predicted the huge increase in the number of amateur and professional paleontologists worldwide.

Strata Thickness- In the late 1800s, a British geologist estimated that 75 million years has lapsed since the beginning of the Cambrian.

This estimate was based upon the maximum known thickness of strata (from Cambrian to present) divided by the average rate of sedimentation in modern environments. Joly used the salinity of ocean water to determine the age of the earth.