What story does the Natural History Museum in London tell?
That we are advancing towards the sixth extinction...
Don't scare me.
Our scientists are analyzing the obvious parallels between our era and that of the great extinction of the Triassic-Jurassic...
How are they alike?
...And that mass extinction, which we can observe in each piece of the museum to fit them into the puzzle of evolution, was caused by volcanic eruptions that emitted huge amounts of CO2 that heated the atmosphere.
Like the emissions of humans today when burning fossil fuels?
Carbon dioxide from the eruptions then warmed the earth's atmosphere by between 1.5 and 6 degrees Celsius...
Are we getting close?
...and when it fell and dissolved in the oceans it acidified them, and that acidified water eroded the calcareous protections of the phytoplankton until it ended with it and with the trophic chain of the species that fed on it and, in this way, endangered life on the planet.
How fragile is the balance we depend on?
So much so that right now we can also trace that increase in ocean acidification by CO2.
As?
If we take samples of the evolved forms of that phytoplankton today and measure their calcareous shells, we will see that they are thinning today just like in the Jurassic because of the same acidification...
And can we check it in the museum?
For 40 years our scientists have been checking it periodically and exposing it. So let's collect, observe, interpret and make humanity respond before it's too late.
Is the museum no longer a testimony of the past, but an indispensable alert for the future?
Furthermore, we are an institution in which people trust and scientists serve: we have Darwin in effigy enlightening us...
A beacon for all science.
And people do not see us as an extension of the will of politicians but as an expression of science in communion with society and its public-private initiatives.
Do they also influence the powerful?
The big companies that support us, I assure you, are very sensitive to the warnings that we give here about the destructive potential of part of their activity.
What companies?
We have influenced, for example, mining companies to minimize their ecological impact.
Are dinosaurs your stars?
They ruled the Earth for 200 million years, just as we ruled it only 30,000 years ago. And the museum warns that maybe we won't last that long and it will be our own fault.
I saw your show 'Our Broken Planet'.
Analyze what we eat, what we buy, the energy we consume and the non-responsible and responsible way of doing it...
As?
We are a red light. In the UK there was a diversity of crops and flowers with them and 250 species of British bees adapted to them, but they became monocultures to be more profitable. The museum counts and exhibits 23 of 24 of those extinct species.
What happened to 24?
We have to make do with drawings, because we couldn't locate any more... And I grew up observing them all...
Bye-bye, cute little buzzing bees!
We have nests of birds that have been extinguished and that my generation listened to and distinguished when spring arrived.
How many stories does the museum tell?
We have 27,500 specimens on display, selected from more than 18 million of the total collection. And each well-played piece alarms us about that extinction.
Is the Tyrannosaurus rex also the king of the collection here?
It's a star, but I'm not sure why the British prefer diplodocus.
What is your favorite animal story?
Perhaps how the dinosaurs that ruled the Earth are today birds.
Where can I watch it?
The dinosaur bones on display are hollow: fascinating air-conditioning machines. And now with scanners we can accurately understand its structure.
Would Darwin have been happy watching them?
Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1872 and the museum opened in 1880. I can honestly say that we helped the world understand that we are not creation, but evolution.
What would be the message today?
Diversity is the engine of evolution and we are destroying it. And by destroying it we are advancing towards the sixth mass extinction on the planet: ours. Each piece here forms the puzzle that tells it.
