I have not exactly an idea, but a proposal for you.
The proposal of a discovery.
A discovery I’ve been making for 27 years,
in the company of geologists, paleontologists and students;
and writing books,
illustrated by talented paleoartists.
This discovery we have to make has to do with this world.
School is our world.
It is our main world where we can learn and have fun.
However,
limited by the walls of the school, we do not always have access to it.
But, there is a truth.
In the courtyard of each school there is a large Olympic swimming pool,
that we do not seem to believe it’s there.
It’s a moment, it’s the space for intellectual amusement,
but our children do not learn to swim,
simply because we do not show them that it is there.
Not all of you may have noticed
that the world I showed earlier
it was a prehistoric world.
This glow you see in the center of the supercontinent Pangeia
illustrates the impact of a 3 km asteroid,
which collided in the state of Mato Grosso.
Its effects, associated with great volcanism,
which occurred in northern Pangeia, Siberia, 254 million years ago,
practically deleted the multicellular life
all around the world.
This was one of the most remarkable events in the history of life
and happened in Brazilian lands.
I want to show you this set,
which has up to 4.55 meters in length
and every meter of it is a billion years old.
Then we have the birth of the Earth;
500 million years later,
the organisms, the bacteria, already infested the oceans;
3.4 billion years ago
there are the oldest rocks in South America and they are in Brazil;
2.4 billion years ago,
we have the earliest vestiges of fossil life,
the bacterial life, in rocks of Brazil.
The animals appear 60 cm from the end, 600 million years ago,
of the first animals with skeletons and they appear in Brazilian rocks.
Dinosaurs arrive 230 million years ago.
At 6 cm from the end was that great extinction that everyone knows existed.
And in the last millimeter, here, closed by Gabriela’s finger,
if we divide it by three,
in an area equivalent to a little larger
that a hair, is all the time of our existence.
Thank you very much.
If I ask you the name of a dinosaur.
No need, I know what you’re thinking.
But if I ask you the name of a dinosaur,
who lived in Brazilian lands, 80 million years ago …
Well, this 9-meter giant, its remains have been found
in the same state where the great asteroid’s crater is,
which is Mato Grosso.
This 9-meter giant is Pycnonemosaurus
and its difficult name means Mato Grosso.
And if I ask you then to tell me the name of the dinosaur
oldest known in Brazilian lands.
Anyone take a chance?
Total silence?
This is the Pampadromaeus, the corridor of the Pampas,
one of the oldest dinosaurs in the world.
It is not surreal that we do not celebrate
the fact that the dinosaurs appeared in our lands
230 million years ago?
This is the prehistory that I was referring to, that large pool,
in which we need to learn how to dive
We can transform our prehistory
an item of our culture.
All countries that invest
and that prioritize education
transformed their own prehistory into an item of culture,
as well as music, literature, sport and the arts.
Their prehistory is everywhere.
His children learn at school the geological history of their country,
the geological history of your state.
They know the names of prehistoric animals, they know what they did;
of the animals that lived,
whose fossils are preserved in the rocks beneath their feet.
We have pretty much the duty to show this great pool
for our children in schools.
We can not leave our great Olympic pool of prehistory empty.
Our dinosaurs are also wonderful.
This is the Tapuiasaurus, which lived 130 million years ago,
in the northern region of Minas Gerais.
Our dinosaurs saw the first flowers with their perfumes evolve.
Our dinosaurs devoured our earliest mammalian ancestors.
Our dinosaurs witnessed the birth of South America
and the Atlantic Ocean.
And more.
They left millions of footprints in an immense and arid desert of dunes,
which occupied a large part of the national territory for millions of years.
These sands gave rise to a rock where it is today
one of the greatest treasures of our prehistory:
the Guarani Aquifer,
the third largest underground aquifer in the world.
Ten years ago,
an exhibition of prehistoric animals led to the Oca,
to the Ibirapuera Park, in a period of 3 months,
550 thousand people.
The kids love the prehistory,
because it is small that one learns to swim.
In 2018, a new project,
illustrated in these brilliant illustrations
of Rodolfo Nogueira, our paleoartist,
will take the dinosaurs back to the Oca.
Only this time,
the whole exhibition will be with dinosaurs and Brazilian landscapes.
And when we took our kids to a restaurant,
to eat delicious food,
it’s not for them to become chefs, is not it?
So we do not need to overload our children and our children,
leading them to exhibitions, to museums, encouraging reading,
for them to become scientists.
Do not.
We do this because we have a mission to educate them.
We have a mission to teach them how to have fun.
We have to give them the chance to choose.
What will they do with their lives in the future,
Let’s leave it to them to decide.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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