[DB 1507 (28); OAB 66] This claim focuses on a paper by R.D. Wilson et al (Science, v.184, pp.857-865 (24 May 1974)). Wilson summarizes what was then known about the rate of natural petroleum seepage from underground deposits into the ocean, then makes a very approximate estimate of the worldwide rate of seepage. After comparing his seepage rate to estimates made by others of the amount of oil available for seepage, Wilson concludes that the present rate of seepage could be maintained for at least 50 million years. The young-Earth publications, such as DB and OAB, therefore claim that this 50 million years is a limit on the age of the Earth. However, in his very next sentence, Wilson points out that the reservoir of oil available for seepage is actually greater than what his colleagues had estimated, due to deposits at greater ocean depths that the previous estimates had not included, and thus there is no difficulty in sustaining the present rate of seepage back into the Mesozoic era (the time at which most of the oil was formed). Wilson also emphasizes that his estimate is an extremely rough one, and that there is no evidence that past rates of seepage are the same as at present. To summarize, 1) The estimate of 50 million years, quoted by young-Earth advocates, is not Wilson's final estimate but a much younger one. 2) Wilson himself cautions that his estimates are extremely rough. 3) Nothing in the paper mentions or deals with the age of the Earth in this first place; Wilson's estimate is of the age of the oil deposits, which everyone agrees are much younger than the Earth as a whole, and his estimates are consistent with the standard age of the deposits.