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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 it's often not present in that large an amount. and of course, when we're dating very small relics, ...

>> in 2010, the world of archaeology was galvanized by the discovery in bulgaria of a relic whose date and dna are compatible with those of john the baptist. in oxford's archaeology lab, tom and george wait for the results of this new test. as they work to build up a comprehensive date map of john the baptist's relics across europe, could this latest test match the individual from bulgaria? >> you can see, here's the actual date. it's between 661 to 770 a.d. >> right. >> so that's much younger than john the baptist. it's not john the baptist. >> so it's not the same finger that we looked at in...

>> guards! >> i think when john the baptist realizes that herod is going to execute him is this astonishing sense of ending and conclusion. and he knew, as a prophet, this is the completion of a prophetic call. >> the scientific quest to date the kansas city finger bone attributed to john the baptist is reaching its climax. >> successful in retrieving enough material for an accurate reading at oxford university's archaeology research lab, they prepare the sample for the accelerator mass spectrometer.

The winner. >> repent or you should be punished! >> you know, you've done this before. you know what you're doing. >> okay. well, we'll just have to see how it goes, i think. >> in kansas city, professor tom higham of oxford university is trying to figure out a way of drilling into a relic of john the baptist. >> 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 prote...

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 rel iks. >> 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 cou...