It's more a question of ignorance and lack of interest than
stupidity, but I broadly agree. I read an article recently that supports your point, but I don't know if I can find it again.
It also supported something I've known for a long time. American scientific knowledge is on a par with other western countries, but Americans have a much higher rate of not accepting certain aspects of science when they feel it conflicts with their religious beliefs, and that's why we often get the impression that the level of ignorance is higher.
It's purely because the level of religiosity is higher than in Europe. That's why the difference in the Dane's 14% for humans living alongside dinosaurs, and a possible 45% for Americans on such a question. The people of both countries may have been about equally exposed to information about the dinosaurs, but few Danes need to believe that humans were created in the first week of the earth's existence.
Plenty of people here in Britain will not be able to give you the accurate age of the earth because, although they may well have been taught it in school, they're not sufficiently interested for it to stick. But the rate that go for less than 10,000 years is about the same as the Danes on the dinosaur question (15% in the last survey I saw).
They're not all necessarily Biblical literalists. Some will just have chosen that as a guess in a multiple choice question with perhaps three options, because they've got no idea, and they'll be other lucky guesses that get the answer right.
We can try experiments for ourselves. I used to win bets (usually just a beer or two but sometimes cash) in my youth by saying to people that they'd give me the wrong answer to the question of why we see the moon change shape during the month. Most would answer that it's because the earth is between it and the sun, and our shadow causes the effect, so I was on to a good thing even if some got it right.
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