In the beginning of the movie the Priest tells Dr. Birack that the Catholic Church containing the demonic fluid, located in Los Angeles, was built in the 1500s by Spanish missionaries. The Spanish did not colonize California with missions until 1769, with the founding of San Diego by the explorer-missionary Fra Junipero Serra. The mission where filming took place, Mission San Fernando Rey de España, was not founded until 1797.
The student radiologist Susan Cabot says she has been "carbon dating the corrosion on the lid" of the cylinder, and "we're talking about 7 million years". Carbon dating is used to determine the age of materials, usually organic, containing carbon, not metal corrosion substances, and is only useful for about 60,000 years.