Writing it was “discovered less than 150 years ago” is way more than a reader-friendly oversimplification, and it absolutely is not obvious to someone with no expertise in this stuff. Without seeing this discussion, I for sure would’ve thought that they’re claiming nobody knew the animal even existed before that. And I don’t have the knowledge to even recognize that as a claim worth fact-checking, let alone correctly interpret that they meant something different. So yeah, not great journalism here.
Writing it was “discovered less than 150 years ago” is way more than a reader-friendly oversimplification, and it absolutely is not obvious to someone with no expertise in this stuff. Without seeing this discussion, I for sure would’ve thought that they’re claiming nobody knew the animal even existed before that. And I don’t have the knowledge to even recognize that as a claim worth fact-checking, let alone correctly interpret that they meant something different. So yeah, not great journalism here.
https://xkcd.com/2501/