So What?

SYDNEY, Aug 29, 2006 (AFP) - An Australian fossil find may mean living creatures left the world's oceans for the land much earlier than once thought, rewriting a small part of mankind's evolution, scientists said Tuesday. A study of rocks collected near Buchan in Victoria state's East Gippsland has yielded a lung fish fossil more than 20 million years older than earlier finds, Macquarie University researcher Zarena Johanson told AFP.

So, the scientists are wrong once again. They missed the bulls-eye by 20 million years. But, when your field of study involves constant guessing, this happens all the time. I enjoy Jurassic Park and Discovery's Walking with Dinosaurs as much as the next person. But they are based on a science that itself is based on fiction. Scientists don't know what color dinosaurs were, how they sounded or how they behaved. They don't know whether they were warm-blooded or cold-blooded. They don't even know what the bones were like because dinosaur bones are replicas made of minerals, not actual bones. But, what's the harm. It's a paycheck. And what possible importance could creatures that lived 65 million years ago have on us anyway? They make great oil.