Page 13 - Finger Bone News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

It goes. >> in kansas city, professor tom hyam of oxford university is trying to figure out a way of drilling into a relic of john the baptist. >> because here it's open already. i think it's best to go in here. >> he hopes to date the carbon inside the bone and perhaps even get a dna profile that can then be matched against the first century relic he has already tested from bulgaria. >> it's the collagen part of the bone that we want to date. that's the protein part. and that, in modern people, is about 20% by weight. but of course, in older materials, the collagen decays and degrades. and so...

With the german lord henry the lion. we know that he visited constantinople and requested relics. but it's possible that may have had origins much older than that. ♪ >> should we get the bone out and we'll look at it now? >> sitting in an elaborate gilt housing dating back to the 14th century, for the researchers, the challenge will be how to remove the bone from its precious casing. ♪ and when they try to extract the bone from its mount, there's a problem. >> the mount does not come off of the bone. >> oh, you mean i can't actually take the bone out? >> no. >> and that means tom will stru...

Radiocarbon, we've managed to show that the date from this particular bone is about six centuries later than it ought to be. >> we've tested now two relics of john the baptist. we had one date from the 1st century. we've had one date from the 7th or 8th century, and we're just starting to get a feel for what is out there. it's very exciting. it gives us a new bit of information, and i'm hopeful that we'll go forward from here and ask more questions and test more relics. >> for tom and georges, the investigation goes on. with as many as 200 relics associated with john the baptist, they hope the...

Show that the date from this particular bone is about six centuries later than it ought to be. >> we've tested now two relics of john the baptist. we had one date from the 1st century and one from the 7th or 8th century and we're just starting to get a feel for what there is out there. so it's very exciting. it gives us a new bit of information. i'm hopeful that we'll go forward from here and ask more questions and test more relics. >> for tom and george, the investigation goes on. with as many as 200 relics associated with john the baptist, they hope they may once again find a piece that coul...

The machine will analyze the amount of radiocarbon in the sample and, through that, determine the relic's age. >> using scientific techniques now for first time it's really possible to build up a template of scientific similarities between different individuals to understand more about the movement and the passage of relics across this part of the world during the first millennium a.d. >> now the scientists' work is done. they can only wait for a final answer. could this bone belong to john the baptist? i am totally blind. and sometimes i struggle to sleep at night, and stay awake during the d...