What story does the Natural History Museum in London tell?
That we are moving towards the sixth extinction…
Don't scare us.
Our scientists are analyzing the obvious parallels between our era and that of the Triassic-Jurassic Great Extinction...
How are they similar?
...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 warmed the atmosphere.
Like the emissions from humans today when we burn fossil fuels?
The carbon dioxide from the eruptions then warmed the Earth's atmosphere between 1.5ºC and 6ºC...
Are we getting there?
...and falling and dissolving in the oceans acidified them, and the acidified water eroded the calcareous protections of the phytoplankton to the point of eliminating them and also to the point of ending the food chain of the species that fed on them . And thus, it endangered life on the planet.
So fragile is the balance we depend on?
So much so that right now we can also trace this increase in the acidification of the oceans by CO2.
With?
If we sample the evolved forms of this phytoplankton today and measure their calcareous shells, we will see that they are thinning today just as they did in the Jurassic due to the same acidification...
And can we check it in the museum?
For 40 years, our scientists have been periodically checking and exposing it. So let's collect, observe, interpret and make humanity respond sooner rather than later.
Is the museum no longer a witness to the past, but an indispensable warning of the future?
We are an institution, moreover, that 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 the expression of science in communion with society and its public-private initiatives.
Do they also influence the powerful?
The large companies that support us, I assure you, are very sensitive to the warnings we give here about the destructive potential of some of their activity.
Which companies?
We have influenced mining to minimize its ecological impact, for example.
Are the dinosaurs its stars?
They dominated the Earth for 200 million years, as we dominate it only 30,000 years ago. And the museum warns that we may not last that long and it will be our fault.
I saw his program Our Broken Planet.
It analyzes what we eat, what we buy, the energy we consume and the irresponsible and responsible way to do it...
With?
We are a red light. In the UK there was a diversity of crops and flowers and 250 species of adapted British bees, but they became monocultures to be more profitable. The museum explains and exhibits 23 of 24 of those extinct species.
What happened to the 24?
We had to make do with drawings, because we couldn't locate any of them... And I grew up watching them all...
Goodbye, adorable bees!
We have nests of birds that have been extinct and that my generation would hear and distinguish when spring came.
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-interpreted piece alarms us about that extinction.
Is the Tyrannosaurus rex here also the king of the collection?
It's a star, but I'm not quite sure why the British prefer the diplodocus.
Tell me your favorite animal story.
Maybe like the dinosaurs that ruled the Earth today they are birds.
Where can I watch it?
The dinosaur bones we exhibit are hollow: fascinating air conditioning machines. And now with scanners we can understand its structure precisely.
Would Darwin have been happy to see them?
Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1872, and the museum was opened in 1880. I can say without immodesty that we contributed to the world understanding 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 move towards the sixth mass extinction on the planet: ours. Each piece here forms the puzzle that explains it.
