24 Days of Darwin...

"What does the Origin of Species mean to you today?"

Today in our schools, mentioning The Origin would probably give you blank stares from everyone but the teachers. I find this horribly depressing at best, for The Origin is truly a great piece of literature that I believe is key to understanding the world around us. In reading The Origin, I found that before one truly understands it, one must first translate it from the older English and then read the sentence over again. Then again, that could just be me. The concepts, however, were not only perfectly simple, but are things we now take for granted. The idea that animals and plants are shaped by their environment, for example, is taught from first grade to college and beyond. The idea that destroying that environment will quite possibly bring about their demise of that species of animal or plant is another "standard" fact we take for granted. It is my personal opinion that reading parts of The Origin should be encouraged in public schools as part of scientific curriculum in general.

Aurora Solla
Youth Volunteer, Museum of the Earth

24 Days of Darwin...

"What does the Origin of Species mean to you today?"

As a scientist, the sheer impact of The Origin on science is unquestionable to me, and others have already commented on this here as well as, probably better than, I could. As an editor (especially of the book Charles Darwin: After the Origin, by Sheila Ann Dean, published by PRI in February of this year), I am awestruck by the story of how Darwin “rushed to publish” what he considered only an “abstract” of his ideas, in order to join Alfred Russel Wallace in a joint publication on the theory of natural selection (but also to avoid being “scooped” by Wallace). This 500-page “abstract” was incomplete in Darwin’s view, and he spent the rest of his life generating and publishing evidence to support it, as author Dean so elegantly explains in her book. One might respond, "Now that's focus in research!" but alas, because almost everything biological on the planet could be observed as evidence, Darwin was free to explore many avenues, and indeed, he did. As a “gentleman scholar,” Darwin had no administrative pressure levied on him to publish, and one can only wonder when, in how many volumes, or in fact IF, The Origin would have been published if he hadn’t been forced to finish. Leonardo da Vinci said, “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Paul Valery said the same for poems, as did George Lucas for movies. The same goes for books – Darwin's Origin is a perfect example. Thank you, Mr. Wallace.

Dr. Paula Mikkelsen
Associate Director for Science
and Director of Publications
Paleontological Research Institution

24 Days of Darwin...

"What does the Origin of Species mean to you today?"

Many have commented on how modern “The Origin” can seem when revisited
for insights about the evolutionary process. I recently had just such an
experience. Darwin, we know was influenced by Charles Lyell, whose
geological studies supported a great age for the Earth, and so provided
the necessary sweep of time for the evolutionary processes Darwin
hypothesized. This has led some authors to conclude that Darwin must
have believed that rate of evolution had to be a ponderously slow. For
example, in his book “The Evolution Explosion” Steve Palumbi (2001)
describes how strong natural selection created by human activity has led
to many instances of adaptive evolution that have taken place in just a
few generations. This is a topic that my colleagues and I have explored
and published on ourselves. However, Palumbi asserts that “Darwin
thought … evolution by natural selection had had a long, long time in
which to operate.” And so “He made a serious error about the speed with
which evolution can happen.” Because having a long time to operate does
not necessitate slow evolution, I wondered what Darwin really thought
about the rate of evolution. In “The Origin” on page 183 of the first
edition, I found the following thoroughly modern perspective: “But it is
difficult to tell … whether habitats generally change first and
"characters" afterwards; or whether slight modifications of "characters"
lead to changed habitats; both probably often change almost
simultaneously.” Neither Palumbi nor I could have put it better.

Nelson Hairston, Jr.
FHT Rhodes Professor of Environmental Science
Chair, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Cornell University

24 Days of Darwin...

"What does the Origin of Species mean to you today?"

When I first joined PRI as the Director of Marketing and Communications I attended a lecture given by our Director, Warren Allmon. (If you've never heard Warren speak you should definitely attend one of his Darwin lectures! He's giving a lecture here at the Museum on November 22 and one at the 92nd Street Y on November 18th.) Up until that point I had never really read much about Darwin. I knew who he was and I knew his theories, but I had never read his books including On the Origin of Species. When Warren gives a talk on Darwin, he has a standard line that he uses. He used it in that presentation some three years ago, and he repeated it here on the blog in our first "24 Days of Darwin" posts. He states that, "You cannot consider yourself truly adequately 'educated' without having read it."

I'm a pretty educated guy. I'm a pretty literate person. I've read hundreds and hundreds of books. I've traveled the world. So I like to think that I'm adequately "educated." That said, after hearing Warren I felt like I should get that book and STAT! So from that room, I ordered it from Amazon on my iPhone, and had it delivered in three days. And then I read it.

I was expecting it to be this boring book about science. When I was growing up I didn't have a true interest in science. I leaned more towards history, literature, and the arts. I was a straight B science student. I liked it, but never loved it. I had never had the chance to read the book and never had to for any courses during my college career. I thought the book was very interesting, I felt it dragged in a few parts, but it made perfect sense to me. It was common-sense science. I know that it's not, but that's what it felt like for me.

Someone said to me the other day that reading the Origin is like reading "Dickens." You know -- it is, and it was. That's why 150 years later the Origin is still important and still talked about it because it’s a good book! I approached the book not as a text-book but as a non-fiction novel, and I truly enjoyed it. I found that it's important for more than just its theory of evolution but because it's art. For me Darwin's book was fascinating and engrossing. Not because of the science but because it was literature. The science was an added bonus. If you haven't read it - give it a try. If you liked Dickens you will like Darwin! Then, some might say that you will be truly, adequately, educated.

Billy Kepner
Director of Marketing and Communications
Paleontological Research Institution and its Museum of the Earth

Fossil of the Week

This week's fossil is PRI 28297, Echinocaris punctata (Hall, 1863). It is a "hypotype," which is a fancy technological word for a specimen of an already-named species that was illustrated (or "figured" in science-speak) in a publication that extends the knowledge about the species (in other words, the picture can't just be a photograph in a coffee-table book). Our "type and figured collection" contains many hypotypes, which are in many ways just as important as type specimens. This particular hypotype was illustrated and discussed in the very short paper "New and interesting fossils from the Devonian of New York," by Axel Olsson in Bulletins of American Paleontology number 23, in December 1912. The specimen was worthy of mention because it was found in a new "horizon," that is a layer of fossils that it had never been found in before. This one is from the McGraw or University Quarry on Cornell Campus, from the Upper (or Late) Devonian, Genesee Group, Ithaca Formation - which sounds (and is) really local, and in essence means about 400 million years old.

The species: This fossil is a kind of animal that you might never have heard of before - a phyllocarid crustacean. A phyllocarid (the living ones are called leptostracans) is a very small shrimp-like critter that has a laterally flattened, bivalved carapace enclosing jointed feathery legs for swimming, stalked compound eyes, and a tapering abdomen ending in a forked tail. Phyllocarids live in mud or sometimes in the plankton, along with copepods which they closely resemble. The oval shape that you can see on the rock (here only about an inch long) is the carapace of the phyllocarid - that's the equivalent of the main body of a lobster (minus its tail, legs and tentacles). The sharp "keel" on the fossil is probably the junction of the two carapace valves. There is no widely known common name for these tiny creatures, but the name "sea fleas" has been used. Modern phyllocarids filter-feed, that is, they strain organic particles from the seawater for food using their feathery appendages. There are only about 40 species of living phyllocarids. The living phylocarid Nebalia bipes is illustrated here (photograph by Hans Hillewaert Lycaon, via Wikimedia Commons).

The author: Axel Adolf Olsson (1889-1977) was a student of Cornell Professor Gilbert Harris (PRI's founder and first director), earning an Associate degree in 1913 (so he was a student when he published the paper discussed here). He spent most of his career studying fossil mollusks as a paleontologist in the petroleum industry, and retired to Florida in the 1950s. He served on the Board of Trustees at PRI, and was its president three separate times in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1960s. He was a strong supporter of PRI relocating to the south, because many of the fossils in its collection, including most of those studied by Harris, are from the southeasterm coastal plain.

24 Days of Darwin...

"What does the Origin of Species mean to you today?"

To me, the significance of Darwin' Origin is that, as I turn and look at the well-worn copy on my shelf, it is a reminder that the idea's of a single individual can affect the human species entire. Many think of education as learning a new skill, or memorizing lengthy lists or definitions, but it is my opinion that the greatest educators are those that allow their students--intentionally or not--to see the world with new eyes, whether it's as simple as appreciating the alternating color pattern on a leaf or as complex as understanding humanity's place in the universe. In this respect, Darwin's Origin is undeniably significant, and it is among the very best examples of
education.

Richard A. Kissel
Director of Teacher Programs
Paleontological Research Institution

Old Earth Creationism...

As we approach the 150th anniversary of the publication of the Origin of Species, and while we celebrate the 200th year since Charles Darwin's birth, it is important to realize that our work is not complete on understanding or educating on matters of evolutionary theory. The New York Times just published an excellent story talking about 'old earth' creationism beliefs growing among Islamic cultures. 'New Earth' creationism believes that the Earth is only 6-10,000 years old because the Earth was created in 6 days and the bible is a historical text that explains everything since its inception, and so disagrees with sciences like geology, cosmology, and biology. 'Old earth' creationism sees no problem with geologic time and that the Earth is around 4.6 billion years old, because it doesn't conflict with anything in their religious texts or dogma.

What was exceptionally interesting about this article is that Islamic cultures in their home countries see few problems with scientific observations and accept an old Earth hypothesis. Religious Islamic people from the US or Canada, however, have adopted a 'New Earth' creationism stance, even though there is no written basis for it in their religion.

The article is below:

Science

Creationism, Minus a Young Earth, Emerges in the Islamic World

By KENNETH CHANG

Published: November 3, 2009

A growing number of Muslims seem to accept the idea of a very old planet but reject human evolution, international academics said at a recent conference.