This is a big issue with the "science says ..." attitude that some people have, particularly people who believe themselves to be clever but have no experience a

This is a big issue with the "science says ..." attitude that some people have, particularly people who believe themselves to be clever but have no experience actually doing anything resembling science. I'm not just talking about the "trust the science" mantra that arose during Covid in response to politically-motivated conspiracy theories. That's one instance of a more general phenomenon. We of course don't really know anything that happened billions of years ago. We have some good ideas about it, and data consistent with those ideas, and a lack of data inconsistent with those ideas. That's all we have, and that's all we will ever have. The ideas and data might improve over time (as well as things like computational techniques for using the data), but until we can actually travel back in time we can't ever know anything beyond that.