Why I do what I do: Education, one victory at a time.

I had a great experience the other day – the kind of experience that all educators want. I converted someone.

I didn’t know if they needed or wanted conversion, but they were skeptical of what I was presenting. And I – entirely unwittingly – provided that bit of information that converted them from ‘skeptic’ to ‘believer.’

A fair question to ask at this point is, “What didn’t they believe in?” We’ll get there.

I had been invited to give a talk/presentation on the nebulous topic of ‘dinosaurs.’ The group that invited me had recently had a lively discussion about dinosaurs, but found that they still had questions for which no Google search provided adequate answers. So there I was.

I was a little trepidatious, because, despite the fact that I am a ‘vertebrate paleontologist,’ I really don’t know a whole lot about dinosaurs. There are thousands of 9-year-olds who know more about dinosaurs than I do. Mammals are my thing. But they sent me a list of questions, and I realized that I could address most of them easily. Most had less to do with dinosaurs than they did about the science of paleontology.

As it happened, the group was a delight. We had a fabulous time talking about how the turkey you eat at Thanksgiving really is a dinosaur. We talked about how bones and teeth were made of minerals (essentially rocks) and that’s why they don’t rot (and why they’re preserved as fossils). We talked about what was wrong with Jurassic Park. We talked a bit on how we name, and how we recognize, new species, and about some of the ‘mistakes’ paleontologists have made along the way. We talked about tracks and pseudofossils. Really, there were few topics in paleontology that we didn’t cover, and it was only an hour-and-a-half presentation.

With about 15 minutes to go, the skeptic was revealed (paraphrased):

‘If humans and dinosaurs never co-existed – so humans never saw dinosaurs – how do we know that dinosaurs are real? How do we know that they ever really existed?’

From how the question was asked, I could tell that our skeptic was genuinely curious – not intent on discrediting me or the science, but honestly confused. And as I listened, I was frankly boggled by where the confusion was.

You see, I’ve been at this so long that the reasons why we know that dinosaurs existed seem so self-evident, I don’t understand how people don’t see them. However, one thing I have learned in recent years while teaching introductory geology courses: It is impossible to remember what you didn’t know before you started your studies. That is to say, I don’t remember not knowing how we determine relative ages of rocks. I don’t remember not knowing that rocks exposed on the surface are of all different ages. I finally realized that our skeptic didn’t know these things any more than I did 20+ years ago. I also realized that the answer our skeptic wanted didn’t come from paleontology, but from geology. No wonder Google wasn’t being helpful.

So I stepped back and described Hutton’s original observation of the unconformities in Scotland and how this helps us understand of the depth of geological time. Then I explained how some basic principles (original horizontality, superposition, cross-cutting relationships) can help us put rocks in the correct chronological order. Then I drew a stack of rocks and showed that humans were at the top of the stack and dinosaurs were at the bottom.

And the skeptic’s eyes opened wide. ‘I get it! There were dinosaurs!’

Others in the room were delighted. They’d been trying to ‘prove’ the existence of dinosaurs to the skeptic for a while, and here I had done it with two drawings in five minutes.

I was never my intention to go in there and ‘convert’ anyone. (In fact, I hesitate to use the term ‘convert,’ only that the term was being tossed around by everyone in the room when the presentation was done, including by the skeptic.) I was simply there to answer people’s questions about dinosaurs. I don’t care what they believe about evolution or the age of the earth or anything. I was there to be a better database than the world wide web. I think they got the answers that they wanted, and then some.

And I got that fantastic satisfaction that we all yearn for as educators: Somebody learned something – something that may well alter their world view – and thanked me for it.

Oh, yeaaaaah!