21: Paleontologist Evelyn Vollmer, Figuring out the Age of the Earth, and What Defines a Dinosaur
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Is the Earth Infinitely Old?
Evelyn: For the longest time it's infinity. It went from infinity to 6,000. And I think Archbishop James Usher, he thought that there, it wasn't infinitely old because in the Bible there's a beginning and an end. Nicholas Steno was the first person to be like, yeah,. it's pretty old and we can say so because of fossil fuels. Then we have another dude who experimented with heating up rocks and timing how long it would take for them to cool down. This guy had no idea that we have a mantle that is still super heated. So then we get to William Thompson, who you guys might know as Lord Kelvin, our boy on Earth
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