Happy Darwin Day! If you are reading this then you probably do not need an introduction to Charles Darwin, the importance of his work, how his theory of evolution by natural selection shaped modern Biology. Or if you do, I bet there are
plenty of posts in today’s blogswarm that will address this.
There is one evolutionary force that I would like to talk about on this special day, and that is the force of mass extinction. Over the history of the Earth, fossil records show us that there have been five mass extinctions, or as palaeontologists refer to them “The Big Five”. The most famous and best understood of mass
Image courtesy of NASA
extinctions is also the most recent one: the Cretaceous-Tertiary or KT extinction 65.5 million years ago (Ma),thought to be caused by an extraterrestrial object impacting in the area of what is now Chixclub in the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. The impact (or a combination of the impact and previous volcanic activity) caused the mass extinction of some 60% of terrestrial and 70% of marine species; most famously, the dinosaurs. Fossil records tell us of four more mass extinctions, some larger in scope of species death than the KT.
Artist's rendering of the Chicxulub crater shortly after impact. Courtesy of NASA.
Read more…
I just went to Shirley Wu’s blog and found this. Apparently February 12-15, 2009 there will be a Blog for Darwin blogswarm, in honor of his 200th birthday and 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (First time I hear this term, blogswarm; not sure if I like it). I wrote about Darwin’s birthday earlier, but I guess I will write something new: my blog must adapt! (Actually, that is a very non-Darwinistic statement. If you figured out why, great. If not, answers will be provided sometime between Feb 12 and 15). Click on the image if you want to join the swarm.
The celebrations of Darwin’s 200th birthday and 150 years for the publication of The Origin of the Species are in full swing. We are apes equipped with 10 digits on our forelimbs, which we use in just about everything we do. We like numbers that are multiples of 10; even better if they are 10 times 10. Zelda Roland has assembled a collection of books in this month’s Wired magazine in honor of this celebration. Sadly, the collection of titles
It is sad that we need a book with such a title. But thanks for writing it, Prof. Coyne
selected reflects somewhat on the state of evolution by natural selection, at least in the USA, as a cultural controversy rather than as a scientific theory. Of the seven, two books are polemics, and one of those is a creationist polemic. When the centennial of Einstein’s publication of Special Relativity was celebrated in universities, museums and schools around the world, there was no “teach the controversy”; there was just “teach”. Unfortunately, this is not yet the case for the theory of evolution by natural selection.
– Celebrate Darwin’s 200th Birthday With a Natural Selection of Books Zelda Roland / Wired
