Sunnyvale skeleton

Problems remain, and differing lines of evidence suggest that racemization dating of bone is, at best, tentative, and that many of the early dates for human skeletons are wrong. For instance, the Sunnyvale skeleton (racemization dated at 70,000 years B.P.) is morphologically indistinguishable for skeletons dated between 400 and 1600 years B.P. (10). Another important and controversial skeleton was described in Denver. Bada and Masters presented the results of a detailed study of the general composition and extent of racemization of amino acids isolated from the Del Mar Man skeleton (11). 

Table II. Sunnyvale Skeleton Radiocarbon Measurements by Carbon Dioxide Gas Proportional Decay Counting and...

These results are listed in Table III. In none of the cases do the d/l asp ratios determined for these skeletons approach the ratios of 0.4-0.5 determined for the skeletons such as Del Mar Man and Sunnyvale (16,... 

AMS/HEMS system at the University of Arizona, direct counting of three organic fractions of bone from a human skeleton from the Sunnyvale Site in California, previously dated by the amino acid racemization technique at about 70,000 years, resulted in a revised date of between 3500 and 5000 years b.p. 

---