An attempt at restoring original radiocarbon ages in collagen from bioapatite

Abstract

In the literature there is a consensus that radiocarbon dating performed in bioapatite presents younger datings than those performed in collagen, thus, we propose a general regression that could be used to convert the radiocarbon dating performed in bioapatite to the original ones in collagen in fossil samples all of the world. This general regression presents several good indexes of quality, high correlation (R2 = 0.98), lower values of percent predicted error (%PE = 0.01), and the standard error of the estimate (%SEE = 25), showing that is a good tool, as the predicted values are similar to those observed. Using this regression we converted the radiocarbon datings in bioapatite to collagen made for several taxa from the Brazilian Intertropical Region, and suggest that these datings could be 1-7 Cal BP kyr older than previously thought.