Evolution with dinosaurs
Just a quick one today – a shot I like taken a couple of weeks ago in the Paleontological Museum in Trelew, Argentina.
It was a surprise to find a full-featured, well put-together dinosaur museum pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and even more of a surprise to find it showing a BBC Horizon documentary from 2002 about the hunt for dinosaurs in the empty spaces of Patagonia.
The programme detailed how researchers in Trelew were searching for the “missing link” from the mid-Jurassic period that could help explain if dinosaurs developed according to Darwinian theories of evolution.
They didn’t find much evidence, but they thought it was enough to stand up their theories. Being a bit of a cynic, I wondered quite what evolution sceptics might make of a hugely important piece of theory being underpinned by a tiny difference between two miniscule pieces of fossil.
The scientists seemed happy, but I wanted more proof – especially when another film explained how the universe began with the big bang, when all the matter that makes up the entire universe exploded from a space the size of a pinhead (but they don’t know how).
I’m sure it’s all true, but condensing the history of the universe into seven minutes is always going to skim over a few important points…
