Though I never watched the sitcom "Big Bang Theory", I'm told that a running joke within the dialog was a constant running down of geologists as a lesser species among scientists, and notably inferior to physicists.
If that's a correct summary, it is with a hint of smugness that I note that a geologist (a paleobiologist having earned his undergraduate and both graduate degrees in geology) and an engineer actually solved the riddle, and did so in the old fashioned way--with solid field work. Best is that the popular "Physics Girl" acknowledges that.
Foy