Quick one, but this is a real eye opener. It's just one poll, but if true, this is just fucking scary:
YouGov's latest research shows that 41% of Americans think that dinosaurs and humans either 'definitely' (14%) or 'probably' (27%) once lived on the planet at the same time. 43% think that this is either 'definitely' (25%) or 'probably' (18%) not true while 16% aren't sure. In reality the earliest ancestors of humans have only been on the planet for 6 million years, while the last dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.
I severely hope that this is just because of enthusiasm over
Jurassic World and nothing else, because damn, that is scary.
Not surprisingly, religion is the big factor:
There is a religious split on this question. While most Americans who describe themselves as 'born again' (56%) believe that humans and dinosaurs once shared the planet, most Americans who do not describe themselves as born again (51%) think that they did not. Only 22% of born again Americans think that dinosaurs and humans did not coexist.
I wonder how many of them actually buy the old "there was no room for them on Noah's Ark" story. (My personal theory; they got kicked off after the T-Rexes and raptors mistook the unicorns for room service.)
More from Digby, who I thank for catching this and for putting it in very blunt terms:
This is dinosaurs, people. The obsession of every elementary school age boy and many a girl too. Even the Jurassic movies make it abundantly clear that humans and dinosaurs were not on earth at the same time.
Maybe we've always been this uneducated. I sure hope so because that means we've managed to survive despite the fact that we are, as a species, dumb as paleolithic rocks.
Come on, folks. If
Christopher Soprano can figure out how crazy this is, you can too.