The search for truth should guide any investigation that claims to be considered scientific. It has nothing to do with imposing our opinions or with supporting our beliefs, but rather, with sincerely analyzing the evidences discovered. In this season, we invite you to go back in time and to learn much more than just myths or speculations to go beyond inventions and appearances and come face to face with both the errors and the successes of the studies that investigate these fascinating creatures: the dinosaurs.
Origins The evidence is so overwhelming that it is impossible to doubt. We have the bones of multiple species of dinosaurs on all continents. We have footprints in numerous places, and we have the eggs.
These footprints, for example, must belong to dinosaurs. They can't belong to any other animal. Their morphology cannot be of any animal, living or extinct, that we know.
They also fit very well with the morphology of the dinosaur bones that we have found. Additionally, we have found eggs; the eggs that we've found couldn't belong to another species, for example, because of their size. When we examine the structure of the egg shell, it doesn't correspond with the shell structure of any other reptile.
Since the discovery of the first remains of dinosaurs in the nineteenth century, these gigantic skeletons have been the principle attraction of many museums around the world. If you see these exquisite bones closely, they are only reproductions of the original bones, which are so carefully kept and protected in secure places, and have played a major role in establishing dinosaurs as one of the preferred scientific themes in society-- especially among the little ones. For me, the study of dinosaurs is fascinating because it is like a detective's case.
For example, here we have the footprints, and we ask ourselves the same questions that a detective makes when he has to investigate the case of a disappearance of a person, or the case of a homicide. What are the questions? The questions are the what, the who, the how, the where, the why, and the when.
Six questions. These six questions are what we paleontologists ask ourselves when we come across fossils, or when we find footprints like these. We want to know what they are, and not just that they are evidently animal prints.
We want to know when they formed, and how they formed, and under what conditions. How was the sediment when they formed? Who made these prints?
What species, what size, and what characteristics belonged to that animal, etc. We are intrigued by these questions. The study of dinosaurs is fascinating in and of itself, and because the things of the past are fascinating.
Footprints Eggs Skeletons: inert portraits of a past exuberant life; a story that captivates us with the possibility of an exceptional reality So foreign to what today we call common. A mysterious past that we draw close to by interpreting the evidences, which, although they are numerous, are still not sufficient to understand plainly what existed and to interpret what could have happened. These are findings that call for a responsible investigations, progressive and profound; A sincere science that recognizes its limits, and that integrates the future generations in the long road that still needs to be traveled in order to know and to reconstruct the history of our world.
Year after year, scientists and enthusiasts of all ages and places run the hills of Wyoming, excavating in search of evidences. Day after day in the month of June for more than 20 years, the Hanson Research Institute has been an ideal place to discover new evidences about the characteristics and habits of these enigmatic animals that at one time populated the earth. Although we find in the rocks partial evidences, and in some of their stories we see the varied interpretations that measure and advance the knowledge, The existence of the dinosaurs constitutes an unquestionable fact.
Although for some, the extraordinary seems to them improbable, and the quantity of evidence is only a reflection of the desire of many to believe. To believe only in that which is plainly understood is to ignore that part of science is to recognize the inconclusive, and that the motor of its development is the need of mankind to decipher what it doesn't know, even when getting near the truth requires an act of faith. There are two extremes.
One is to throw yourself into speculation and create hypotheses that don't make much sense. And I often say "Blessed is he whose creativity doesn't surpass his judgment. " But on the other hand, one could also ignore the evidences, and this is also a big danger.
You'll see that throughout the Christian history one of the biggest problems was that faith became. . Faith became a synonym for ignorance.
Do you remember that Christian leaders put themselves in opposition to Galileo Galilei, and against other scientists, because they believed that Earth was the center of the universe? And these scientists were even persecuted. So in a way, there was a break between science and religion because the people who defended religion defended it in an ignorant and dogmatic manner, without being open to discoveries that made Biblical sense.
So that is how science developed in a way even parallel to religion, in opposition. In a way, there is no justification for the French revolution as such, because it was anti-religion, but ignorant religion ends up paving the way for this. The extensive zeal in some scientists, or in people in general, to prove certain ideas, both in science or in the Bible, can force the evidence to say things that it doesn't really say.
We should be honest with what we observe and what we read, in science and in the Bible, and be honest with the evidence that we find. The truth does not need to be forced, neither in science nor in the Bible. The truth will arrive, but it needs some serious work, and that work takes a lot of time.
It is obtained through honest, detailed observations, and by not having fear of what one will find. Neither the method nor the principle guarantee science the absence of prejudices. Although the principle objective is to always search for the truth, in the subjectivity of man, the paths can differ and divide to the point of polarization, building barriers instead of bridges and censure instead of dialogue, impeding the plurality of ideas and collisions that could be the key to taking the next step.
In this new season of Origins, discover a world inhabited by magnificent animals, from the giant sauropods weighing tons to tiny dinosaurs not much bigger than a fowl. What are the secrets behind these beings that time has appeared to want to hide? Can the new leads made by the investigations of the dinosaurs shed new light over the way that we think of their origins?
