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Culture

Do Americans Believe Dinosaurs and Humans Lived at the Same Time?

Updated Mar 05, 2016
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Jurassic Park and its sequels -- including 2015's record-breaking Jurassic World -- have been putting people in movie theater seats since the original film debuted in 1993. The premise of Jurassic Park is that a billionaire and a team of geneticists could clone long-extinct dinosaurs. Although they are science-fiction, the Jurassic Park films may have influenced the results of a 2008 Harris poll and a 2015 YouGov poll. Both surveys found that roughly 40% of Americans believe that humans and dinosaurs co-existed on Earth.

Both surveys probed American beliefs related to biblical creationism, evolution, evolutionary biology and general science knowledge. The 2015 YouGov poll also found that only 54% of respondents knew that the basis of the movies -- the ability to clone DNA from fossils -- is not currently feasible.

Fact and fiction about dinosaurs on Earth:

  • Mankind's earliest direct ancestors appeared on Earth just 6 million years ago -- long after the dinosaurs died out in a cataclysmic event.
  • The original Jurassic Park was based on a 1990 novel by Michael Crichton. The story takes place on a fictional island off the Central American coast, near Costa Rica.
  • Jurassic World broke records for the best opening weekend ever, raking in almost $209 million in North America.
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Discussion Comments

By anon994696 — On Feb 29, 2016

It is astonishing that such a high percentage of the American public are so profoundly misinformed.

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