I have watched many science documentaries. How often does a
documentary proclaim the extinction of dinosaurs “65 million
years ago,” as if datings were from a verifiable measurement or
extinctions were from a verifiable observation! Dinosaurs were
not a species. “Dinosaur” is a general word for countless
species; likewise for “pterosaur.” Who can dispute the idea that
there were dinosaur and pterosaur species for which we have not
yet discovered fossils? Perhaps nobody disputes that idea. Yet
how rarely is the consequence acknowledged by any scientist! The
point is this: There is a world of difference between extinction
and near-extinction. It is the difference between death and
life. Consider this obvious conclusion: Fossils, at best, can
give us only a limited understanding of what species have lived
in the past. I don’t belittle what paleontologists can learn
about particular organisms that left fossils; but the subject is
extinction, and nothing, absolutely nothing, in all the fossils
(in all the laborato