Q&A: Did dinosaurs and humans coexist, as controversial Sask. textbook claims? We asked an expert
CBC
Dinosaur history has been a hot topic in the Saskatchewan Legislature, leading the provincial education minister and Opposition critic to jaw at one another over the questionable facts of an independent curriculum.
The debate surfaced after former students of Saskatoon's Legacy Christian Academy demanded its curriculum — called Accelerated Christian Education, or ACE — be banned.
The government opposition read from a biology textbook used at an independent Saskatchewan school that read, in part, "scientific evidence tends to support the idea that men and dinosaurs existed at the same time."
The Loch Ness monster was also referenced in the textbook read by the Opposition as "proof that dinosaurs still exist today."
When CBC requested to speak with a paleontologist from the Royal Saskatchewan Museum to clear that up, that request was routed through to the Education minister's office who said the minister wasn't available, despite him not being requested.
Instead, Stefani Langenegger, host of CBC's The Morning Edition, spoke with paleontologist Graham Young, a curator of geology and paleontology at the Manitoba Museum.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: What do we know about when dinosaurs walked the earth?
A: Dinosaurs inhabited the planet for a very long time, from about 230 million years ago to about 66 million years ago. So, well over 100 million years: far longer than the time since they became extinct.
How do we know that?
We're able to do very good age dating on rocks using a variety of methods. Of course, dinosaurs are in sedimentary rocks, but sedimentary rocks, especially in geologically active regions, often have volcanic layers in them and you can date the age of a volcanic rock or an ash using chemicals in it.
What do we know about human evolution relative to when dinosaurs were around?
They're getting to know quite a lot about human evolution because there's been such a focus on it but it depends how you define "human." We're homo sapiens.
So our first relatives who belong to that group of species are from right about two million years ago. So to contrast, the last dinosaurs were 33 times as long ago as the first human relatives.
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