MP> Did something about the volcanic erruption prevent them from being
MP> dated properly?  I had never heard that before.

JA>Quick correction on my part. I checked into that Mt. St. Helens
  >thing again, and I had it wrong. The "thousands of years old"
  >dates came from older wood the eruption kicked up, not the new
  >trees from 1980. Just wanting to be accurate, so I'll own that one.

That was my first thought as well, materials from earlier eruptions,
but there was some wild inaccuracy there. It sort of sounds like
the numbers were thrown off when the organic materials rather than
just dying normally were subjected to the super high heat of the
lava flow there.  There was talk about layers of charred bark from
other eruptions too which added to the confusion.

---
 * SLMR Rob  * Sometimes the hardest thing to do is Nothing
 * Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (618:250/1)