'The Lava Lizard's Tale' by Richard Dawkins

"A guide at the Natural History Museum stated confidently that a particular dinosaur was 70,000,008 years old. When asked how he could be so precise he replied, "Well it was 70 million when I started this job, and that was eight years ago." The evident experience of Valentina Cruz, our wonderful Galápagos naturalist guide, suggests that I must add a similar margin to the estimate of 100 years that she gave us for the age of the black lava fields on the island of Santiago. The exact date of the great Santiago eruption is not recorded, but it definitely happened on one particular day in one particular year around 1900. I shall call it SV day (Santiago volcano day). I need to seem as precise as the museum guide, although the exact date doesn't matter. Perhaps it was January 19 1897, 100 plus eight years before my visit to the island."


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Cortesia RichardDawkins.net