And it begins

So I have covered the controversy about the Louisiana State Board of Education allowing the teaching of creationism in the science classrooms (here, here, and video here). This morning I came across this article. The article discusses the fact that the school board in Livingston Parish, LA is considering teaching creationism in science class.

Having lived in Louisiana I am personally surprised that it took 2 years for some school board to decide to take up teaching creationism. There are also plenty of areas that I figured would have tried to teach it before Livingston Parish. But what really got to me was this:

Board Member David Tate quickly responded: “We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”

Fellow board member Clint Mitchell responded, “I agree … you don’t have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution. Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom.”

No this isn't the way that classroom policy should be determined just because all of you believe that creationism is correct doesn't mean that it is correct. The way that they are handling this is no better than the way Texas handled the social studies curriculum earlier this year (here, here, and here). While I am perfectly fine with teaching the "fallacies" with evolution filling in these gaps with creationism is not the way science works, just because we don't know the answer right now doesn't mean that we won't in the near future.

There is some good that I can see with the school board finally deciding to teach creationism. This will give the ACLU a chance to sue over this bill and to finally get it struck down and prevent other schools from going through the same thing. Lets just hope that is what happens.

Falsifying Phylogeny

So a complaint that many creationists raise against supporters of evolution is that evolution is a religion because it is not falsifiable. This isn't true and the most common response is all that it would take would be to find a poodle in the Permian (see DonExodus2's response here). Well AronRa (who I have blogged about once before) has posted a new video that puts the response in his typically well vocalized view on the statement.

See here since embedding was disabled

Museum Visit #2

Yes I know I said that this one would be on the Museum of Texas Tech University but I haven't actually had the time to go through the museum yet so I will get back to that later.

So I was driving between San Antonio, TX and Baton Rouge, LA earlier this month. This drive is just a trip down I-10 which involves driving through Houston. So since I was driving through, and there was an exhibit that I wanted to see (more on that later), I decided I would stop at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

This is a large museum with many different portions to their exhibit but since I only had a few hours to spare I decided to focus mostly on the paleontology oriented exhibits since that is more what interests me. The main paleontology hall you walk into the standard dinosaur hall. This is what you expect to see dinosaur wise from most, a T-Rex a type of sauropod a Quetzalcoatlus (this is an interesting cast that I will discuss later) and a handful of other dinosaurs, but is still put together very well. Around the outside of this exhibit hall the exhibit shows many different fossils from different time periods and the exhibits tend to make sure to show fossils from the state of Texas.

Continuing around the exhibit you do find some mammals including a cast of an early lemur like primate jaw from Wyoming. There is also a good discussion on the evolution of the horse. Overall this is what you would expect from a mammal exhibit from a major museum, it is interesting but doesn't bring in the crowds.

I walked quickly through the Wiess Energy Hall and then I made it to the second level of the museum and walked through the gem and mineral hall and the malacology exhibit but didn't focus on either of these three due to lack of time but they are worth checking out if you go there. While on the second floor I noticed that the cast of the Quetzalcoatlus had different colored bones. There were some that were a grey to black color and were smooth in texture while there were others that were brown and looked more realistic in their texture. My best guess of what these changes in color mean is that the brown bones are casts that represent what has actually been found of Quetzalcoatlus and the rest is what we might expect to find in the future.

I then went to the exhibit that I really went there to see, the Archaeopteryx: Icon of Evolution exhibit. This is what I really wanted to go see since my current research is on a pterosaur sample that was found in the Solnhofen Limestone of Germany which is where all of these samples are from. The specimens on display here are amazing and you can see soft tissue in everything from the pterosaurs to the insects. The exhibit winds you though tons of fish and other organisms from the limestone and eventually you get to the highlight the Archaeopteryx. The exhibit does a great job of using Archaeopteryx to support the Theory of Evolution. It did such a good job I heard someone leaving clearly frustrated say, "I still don't believe we evolved 'cause of the big bang or anything." I think it put a clear ding in their armor of creationism. If you are in the Houston area go see this exhibit before it leaves town on September 6.

Having a little extra time, and not wanting to continue driving in the rain (it was a waste I got caught driving in the rain anyway), I decided to head into the Butterfly Center. I remember going here when I was a younger kid but they had updated the entrance now. You now get to see other insects before you walk in get the see the butterflies emerge from their chrysalis. They also try to teach kids that bugs aren't bad and they all do stuff that needs to be done so don't be afraid. The exhibit is well put together and the plants have grown since I was last there creating a much more foresty (is this even a word whatever I'm going with it) feel. The butterflies were all over the place which apparently they hadn't been earlier in the day but you can tell they are used to avoiding people they stayed away from anything that moves so you have to be very still to get them to land on you.

I normally wouldn't say anything about the gift shop but I don't think that I have ever been in a museum gift shop that big or one that sold that much fancy stuff, not what you would normally expect.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a great trip and as I said if you are in Houston before the Archaeopteryx exhibit ends go for sure. Make sure you have some time to spend because there are many different things to see and do here that make the experience worth the trip.

Museum visits page

Well Darn!!!

A few months ago I wrote a quick piece about a potentially venomous dinosaur. I said I would read the paper but didn't get access to it till I was too busy to get around to it. Anyway I wanted it to be true but a new paper (Gianechini et al., 2010) seems to show that Sinornithosaurus probably was not in fact venomous. The authors did have a chance to respond (Gong et al., 2010) but it is questionable on if they have met their burden of proof. Now I haven't read the papers and the way things are going with the papers I need to read I won't reach that want to pile until much later. Anyway Brian Switek over at Dinosaur Tracking has a pretty good write up on both papers and I am sure he has read them so go read his review.

Gianechini, F., Agnolín, F., & Ezcurra, M. (2010). A reassessment of the purported venom delivery system of the bird-like raptor Sinornithosaurus Paläontologische Zeitschrift DOI: 10.1007/s12542-010-0074-9

Gong, E., Martin, L., Burnham, D., & Falk, A. (2010). Evidence for a venomous Sinornithosaurus Paläontologische Zeitschrift DOI: 10.1007/s12542-010-0076-7