Chaos theory

If Chaos Theory is correct, and a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world can cause a hurricane on the other, then two alert boys, filled with the perceptiveness and inquisitiveness of youth, can help turn around a town’s fortunes with their discovery of a dinosaur trackway. Much has been written and said in the media about the Flatbed Creek ankylosaur trackway discovery in 2000 by Mark Turner (eleven) and Daniel Helm (eight). Here, then, are the salient points: they were tubing down rapids, they fell off, they walked back upstream on the bedrock along the bank, and then correctly identified the series of depressions in the rock as dinosaur footprints.

They alerted the only adult present (yours truly) of their find, and have maintained ever after that I ridiculed it. My defence, that I was trying to instill a healthy sense of skepticism, by trying to rule out other possibilities, has been met with derision from then, something which seems to have increased over the years (oh, well).

Charles Helm, Exploring Tumbler Ridge (Tumbler Ridge News, 2008).