Skeptic: Promoting Science and Critical Thinking

Reinventing Evolution: Dinosaurs and Punctuated Equilibrium
(Conference 1999. Part II)

In this lecture, world-renowned dinosaur hunter Dr. John R. “Jack” Horner speaks on how preconceptions get in the way of scientific truth when people attempt to interpret dinosaur fossils. The ancient Greek’s mythical Gryphon may have been inspired by hook-nosed protoceretops fossils. The outdated Linnean system of classifying animals forced scientists to misclassify dinosaurs as reptiles until scientists realized dinosaurs were more like birds, and exchanged the Linnean system in favor of the more accurate cladogram.

Paleontologist Dr. Donald Prothero addresses Eldredge’s and Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium — an argument largely supported by fossil record evidence. Prothero brilliantly surveys 30 years of evolutionary theory and the heated debates about the meaning of the fossil record evidence. Controversy in science is a good thing, he said, not the weakness that creationists claim it to be.