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Interviews: Ask What You Will of Paleontologist Jack Horner
John "Jack" R. Horner is the Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, adjunct curator at the National Museum of Natural History, and one of the most famous paleontologists in the world. Known in the scientific community for his research on dinosaur growth and whether or not some species lived in social groups, he is most famous for his work on Jurassic Park and being the inspiration for the character of Alan Grant. Horner caused quite a stir with the publication of his book, How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever, in which he proposes creating a "chickensaurus" by genetically "nudging" the DNA of a chicken. Jack has agreed to step away from the genetics lab and put down the bones in order to answer your questions. As usual, you're invited to ask as many questions as you'd like, but please divide them, one question per post.
Assuming you had some great technology that could collect it, is there any possible source of dinosaur DNA that would allow a more or less complete rebuild of a dinosaur (again assuming great futuristic technology that can accomplish this - think nanobots and strong AI)? Or is all dinosaur DNA forever gone? Or is it an undecided question?
"...I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease." - Linus Torvalds
Your dinochicken could be the perfect way for KFC to transition to serving actual chicken.
I am prepared to purchase a ticket to Isla Nublar to see it.
The 20th anniversary enhanced version will return to theaters in a few weeks. Supposedly Crichton modeled the Sam Neill character partly after you. What positive and negative things did this movie do for dinosaur paleontology? I would have thought it got a few more children interested in the subject.
If I were going to fund 1 program, which should I fund chickensaurus over resurrecting a Neanderthal, Woolly Mammoth, or a Tasmanian Tiger? I mean they are all valid – but please make your case on why you should go first.
Why all the focus on going straight to Dinosaurs? Why not resurrect the Dodo Bird or the Passenger Pigeon - start with something recently extinct and work your way up to dinosaurs?
From time I spent playing with kids and miniature plastic dinosaurs, I imagine the popularity of your chickenosaurus project would be enormous. If you succeed, do you have a plan to fund future genetic research by marketing the animals as pets?
Do you like digging in the dirt, with just a pick and brush?
Did your mother ever make you sit in a corner?
Something that's always made me curious about Paleontology is how far the study has come. If we look back historically at how dinosaur bones were exhumed and treated, some of the methods were actually a little bit destructive. So I've always wondered how paleontologists today cope with the fact that 100 years in the future we will likely have technology beyond our wildest dreams that will be able to scan the ground and find fossils in their original preserved intact positions and when they are excavated the process will surely be much more refined and exact measurements will be taken to better understand dinosaurs. I'm sure preservation techniques and materials science will allow us to even better handle finds. How do you cope with this idea that hundreds of years from now your efforts might be seen as crude or arcane? Do you ever wish that some paleontologists of the past had just left the specimens lying there for a future paleontologist to properly handle? Or do you just see this as a necessary way to move forward? Building on that, is there an end-game for paleontologists where the entire Earth has been inspected/surveyed and how many years out is that (I understand that sensor technology would have to come a very long way)?
My work here is dung.
For a long time the primary source of money for scientific research has been the federal granting agencies (NIH, NSF, DOE in particular). All three of them are facing either budget cuts, budget stalls, or increases in their budgets that do not match inflation. This does not seem to fare well for new scientists or established ones who are looking to further their careers.
Where do you see research money coming from next? Alternately, are we looking ahead to a time where fewer people will be doing science because the funding just won't exist to pay even their meager wages any more?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
(Mother Goose anyone?)
Does anyone ever ask you about your actual work, or are you constantly plagued with references to "that movie" from nerds like ones on "this site?"
Which dinosaur would taste the best on my grill this summer? Can we move that type of dinosaur to the front of the genetically-recreated line?
sudo make me a sandwich
will you adopt me?
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
What kind of timetable could mankind do designer creatures or is that not In the foreseeable future, or just too far distant to speculate?
Do you think you're more famous then this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_D._Sampson
We discovered dinosaurs got feathers, then we even figured out colors of feathers. What is the next big thing we'll learn about dinosaurs in the nearest future?
When you dig up an old bone, is there an easy way to distinguish the ones that the Devil planted to lure scientists to hell, vs. the ones that came from creatures that genuinely lived before creation?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If your process is successful, roughly how long do you estimate until the chiken/dino hybrid is available in fast food?
How much have you been influenced by the attempts to breed back aurochs by the Heck brothers? The Heck cattle bear some resemblance to the extinct aurochs. The degree of success is controversial, because there are very significant differences between the aurochs and the Heck cattle. Some believe that the whole idea of breeding back is deeply flawed, because you cannot achieve a genotypical match by working from phenotypical measures..
Could you nudge my DNA so I can grow wings? It would make the commute to work much quicker.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that dinosaurs did not engage in homosexual behavior. Will your chickensaurus include GLBT genes? We live in a more enlightened time and I think we should make sure any resurrected species are inclusive and tolerant.
So, first of all this is hands-down the best Slashdot interview ever!
On to my actual question: what do you think about the possible existence of Paleocene dinosaurs? I understand that any current fossil evidence for their existence is likely caused by reworked fossils. How likely do you believe it is that a particular dinosaur taxon survived a few million years after the extinction event, and what would be the implications of this occurring?
I wanted to be a paleontologist my entire life (and still do) but I ended up in computers because of the money. However I still daydream about it. What is the best part of your job? What's the worst?
Slightly off base from your normal work, how often is dinosaur skin, or its impression, found when fossils are located and has any type of color ever been found associated with the skin?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Could we hope to find for example Ammonite or Trilobite fossils on Mars, because there was once water there and Ammonites and Trilobites are what one might call "Standard Default Species Evolution Step" or an "Evolutionary Stable Species State" when there is water and you give things a few hundred million years ?
So what are the biggest unsolved problems for Paleontology? Where are the controversies?
Dude, seriously, Unity ? WTF ?
What ? Shuttleworth sure didn't answer it, SOMEBODY's gotta.
Domestication changes genes and presumably the epigenome. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to pick an undomesticated bird, perhaps a more "primitive" one than the highly domesticated chicken as the DNA source to "clone" a dinosaur?
Nate
You don't hear a lot about porn stars going into paleontology...
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I understand the reason for theropods having the need to swallow big hunks of meat but that capability would much more easily come from a wide jaw.
Theropods, I would think, wouldn't need to keep a narrow jaw profile like a snake because theropods didn't have to slither into narrow openings. There doesn't seem to be any obviously good reason for theropods to have a jaw that's narrow when they're not swallowing big hunks of meat and wide when they are.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Have you ever taken a YE Creationist out to a site and gone all Tim the Enchanter, "Look at the bones!" ?
Already met him when I was a kid, and asked him my silly question in person :)
How would you respond if a billionaire offered you, say, $100 million to fund a lab and give you the means to create a chickensaurus with one condition: They get the first able specimen to release it on a reserve, hunt it and kill it? I know it sounds absurd but I wouldn't put it past the GoDaddy CEO.
My work here is dung.
you mean little jack horner, sitting in the corner, eating his curds and whey?
Was less gravity *insert wild speculations why* in the days of the dinosaurs required for some of these creatures to attain their enormous sizes - like a brachiosaurus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brachiosaurus_altithorax
I know this is not really your area, but what are your thoughts on the recent discovery that early humans interbred with at least Neanderthals and Denisovans? Do you think there will be further discoveries of different Homo species that our ancestors associated closely with?
I'm a fan of your TED talks. It strikes me that many of your greatest discoveries come from destroying samples. You cut apart bones to see their growth stage, drop bones in acid (for no reason?) and found blood vessels. How did you develop this attitude toward your work?
In science (even computer science) I have a lot of interest in what we know we don't know and what we don't know we don't know. With paleontology and it's subdomains -- specifically your specialty of dinosaur growth -- how do you deal with what must be an unbound realm of what we don't know we don't know? For example, isn't it possible that growth was regulated completely differently in dinosaurs than it is in modern day lizards and birds? Couldn't modern day hormones and endocrine system be much different than what was present in dinosaurs? When you publish research is it all based on assumptions? How do you overcome such an open system of possibilities?
My work here is dung.
How do you think the Permian-Triassic extinction event affected the evolution of dinosaurs and birds? Do you think they would have never existed without it, or would they have been even more diverse?
So, let's pretend the K-T event never happened and dinosaurs survived into the Holocene. What do you think the world's fauna would be like now? How would dinosaur evolution have progressed? Assuming humans had still come onto the scene (because it would be so cool) would we have driven the dinosaurs to extinction by now?
There are currently ongoing attempts to bring back certain extinct species using recovered DNA. What is your prediction for the success of this? How long before we will be successful and what will be the first species we are able to resurrect?
As one rises in stature within the field of Paleontology, are there less bones or more bones to pick? :P
What do you all you Paleontologists think of the song by They Might Be Giants? Respectful of the profession, or insulting?
Kickstarter for pet raptors, buddy. Let's light this candle.
What are the current big, unanswered questions in mesozoic paleontology? That is, what are the questions we have, but do not yet have more than guessed answers for?
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
When many of us here at Slashdot were in high school, it was more or less taken for granted that dinosaurs were cold-blooded reptiles with scales...and later, around college, books started to mention birds as the likely descendants of dinosaurs. Are big dinos like T.Rex, Stegosaurus, etc.still widely believed by researchers to have been cold-blooded reptiles, or is it more likely that dinos like T.Rex were more like a big ostrich than an alligator walking on its hind legs, and that they might have been warm-blooded and/or more recognizably "avian" than "reptilian" (particularly their brains)? Or is viewing the mightiest of the "alpha dinosaurs" (like T.Rex) as ancient birds going a bit overboard, with feathered & avian-like dinos having likely been the exception rather than the norm?
Your work and courage in pursuing conclusions that observation provided should be an example and inspiration to everyone in the sciences. I am sure it has not only been a long road, but one filled with landmines and pot holes. For this, you are owed many more thanks than can be expressed only in words.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Dear Jack, would love to know someone speak intelligently on this issue, which has me curious: How is it that the theropods are in the lizard-hipped family yet they are the ones who seem to have acquired feathers at some point, as opposed to the bird-hipped dinosaurs? Unless I have too little information it seems that the evolution from dinosaur to bird happened more directly from the lizard-hipped (sauriscia) group than the bird-hipped (ornithiscia) group, which strikes me as ironic at best. Can you help illuminate this please?
We all know Paleontology has a major problem in that its techniques for dating the organisms it studies regularly, as the dates are clearly so much further back than Biblical evidence clearly points. How much research now is going into reconciling your fields farcial dates with realistic ones based on the evidence?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Dr. Horner, you have inspired me to engage in the sciences ever since I was a little kid. Although I didn't go into the field of paleontology, I did study computer science and became a software developer for an education company. In my field, we are always trying to find ways to engage kids in the STEM fields to help develop the next generation of engineers, programmers, biologists, and even paleontologists. In your opinion, how do you see the future of your field within the next generation of scientists, and what steps should we take to help kids become more interested in the sciences?
I'm interested in 3d printing of dinosaur bones, and see that some colleges have been scanning and printing bones.
are there any publicly available datasets that you would recommend to those of us who wish to attempt printing dinosaur skeletons at home?
What effects have you noticed on the field of Paleontology from the movie Jurassic Park, and your participation (as advisor) in it? More widespread misconceptions based on movie magic? More (or fewer) students? Funding?
This one is from my 6-year-old boy, Will. We're currently reading a book about dinosaurs (he gets three per bedtime). He wants to know, "how many dinosaurs haven't been discovered yet?" One of his favorites is one that was discovered in China fairly recently (many of the famous ones seem to come from the US midwest from the early part of last century).
While his question is impossible to answer on its own, do paleontologists have a sense of whether the types of soils likely to hold fossils have been well explored, or if we've merely scratched the surface [sic] of what's to come?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Why start with a chicken instead of an Emu or Cassowary? Those large flightless birds already look a lot more like dinosaurs than a chicken. They even have 3 toes. With a longer tail and some teeth they would seem very dinosaur-like.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Do you find as a paleontologist that you're followed around by nerd groupies? You know, those hot young girls that read scientific journals, and want to get down to your Paleozoic?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
How did pulling out a plum lead you to conclude that you were a good boy?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
What's the deal with marrying your student when there was a 46 year age gap between you two? How do you expect parents to hold you up as a role model when you're marrying people twice the age of their children?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but to find dinosaurs you just start digging in mesozoic-aged sedimentary rock, correct? Do you focus on alluvial deposits?
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I don't have a question, but a comment on the Museum of the Rockies. This is an excellent little museum, and well worth the visit. Anyone who goes to Yellowstone, the 1.5 hour trek to Bozeman is well worth the drive. The drive will take you past many geological formations, such as the Devil's Slide, and often takes you past quite a bit of wildlife like elk, bighorn sheep, bears and bald eagles.
The museum is very enjoyable and educational for both children and adults.
I seem to recall that years ago when people questioning if birds evolved from dinosaurs, you met a fair bit of skepticism.
Recognizing the similarities between them has changed how we think of them as big, lumbering cold-blooded beasts.
How's it feel now that acceptance of that idea has turned around the other way and you were right all along?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
So how do you explain that dinosaurs evolved and went extinct within 6000 years (at most)?
Your famous for not having earned your degree, yet you persevered and your reputation for your work goes far outside your field. How hard was it to be taken seriously in your field without the required degree? I ask as someone who also works in a University at a senior level without a degree.
Is it okay to squeeze one of my external hemorrhoids until it pops?
I have seen a protracted fungal spike mentioned as an argument against the Permian Triassic extinction being due to a single event [a series of bolide impacts, etc].
However, from what I had seen, that fungal spike appears only in the African karoo, which -- between that and the Hudson -- look to me like ideal candidate locations for de-Meijer/Van Westrenen style georeactor explosions (that, based on rings of kimberlites around both, and what looks like identical-shaped and identical- oriented scars in both the crust and mantle.).
Because a georeactor explosion would flood the area with neutrons and contaminate the Pb/Pb dating, I am wondering: is the fungal P-T spike found elsewhere, or only in those two regions?
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Since I've been reading Slashdot this is the "ask" article that has drawn the most joke questions, easily. Even more than RMS' article, and Jack Horner has a reasonable haircut and hasn't been caught on video eating his own foot scabs. Now some of the jokes are quite funny, but still...I hope the editors will pre-screen the joke questions out for him.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What is your opinion of the thick atmosphere theory which would render resurrecting an actual dinosaur impossible (i.e. it would explode due to the pressure differential) ? The theory with proof is posted at :
http://dinosaurtheory.com/index.html
For myself, I take a hard interpretation of the scientific method that it only applies to predictions about the future. Predictions that can be tested. If I run an experiment and the prediction fails, the theory is invalidated. To pick an example from physics, if I throw a coconut, I should be able to predict where and how fast it will be at different times in the future during its flight. If the coconut didn't fly (within error) of Netwon's predictions, it would invalidate Netwon's Laws.
This "hard" interpretation prevents me from making predictions about the past. When I see a coconut flying through the air at a certain time and place with a certain velocity, I cannot use the scientific method to tell where the coconut was thrown from. The "hard" interpretation of the scientific method covers any number of events in the future, but cannot be applied to the past, let alone a singular event in the past. To be clear, I _do_ think it's valid to say "Using what we know from science, we can _extrapolate_ that the coconut was thrown from someone standing a place at time in the past". But I accept that any extrapolation could be wrong. This might happen if the coconut was not thrown by a person but dropped by a migrating swallow (African or European).
I'm asking this question because a sizable portion of the United States (roughly 46% in a Gallup poll) believe the universe was created in the last 10,000 years and some of their (our?) leaders want to stop teaching the theory of evolution because they say it contradicts their divine revelations. In my opinion (because of the hard interpretation), the theory of evolution does not contradict their divine revelation. I believe that if we tested the theory - exposed some bacteria to an antibiotic - we'd see it held - the bacteria that survived would become resistant to the substance. It is just the extrapolations we get by applying what we've learned from science - the earth being 4.5 billion years old, human having a common ancestor with apes, etc. - that contradict their divine revelation. I'm okay with someone saying my extrapolations could be wrong as long as they accept the scientific theory (and as long as they don't try to teach their divine revelations in the public schools I help fund!)
As someone in a what Wikipedia calls a "historical science", how should science-lovers view the past? Must someone throw out the theory of evolution if they don't believe in dinosaurs? Obviously Paleontology has had a huge effect by inspiring theories in Biology, just as Astronomy has had in Physics. Do you think we should have a separate name for fields that "extrapolate" the past based on the knowledge gained from science, so that the theory of evolution could be taught without inciting conflict with those who get their past from their divine revelation?
NOTE: I am not a creationist. I believe in dinosaurs and human-ape ancestors. I believe Astronomy, Historical Geography, and Paleontology give us a view of the past that is most consistent with science and that that past should be the one used in the public sphere of a pluralistic society. But I don't want the kids of Kansas to not be taught the theory of evolution for a conflict that, in my mind, isn't the real conflict and the real conflict isn't something a science-lovers would fight over. Well, unless that science-lover happened to be a Paleontologist...
Is "dinosaur" a misnomer? That is, are theropods and sauropods actually any more closely related than, say, birds and lizards?
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Which is your favorite dinosaur, and why?
How many species, estimated, do you think remain undiscovered? Would you say your field is closer to the end, or the beginning? And what was the most unlikely find you'd like to share?
I am John Hurt.
What , if any, locations on Earth would you like to see a dig start up ? Are there places you cannot dig , for physical or political reasons that you are fairly sure are rich sites ?
Are there ways in which the Slashdot crowd could be useful to you? E.g. are there massive data sets that you just don't have the resources or know-how to handle, but that folks around here might be able to help get you to the right resources and techniques? I'm a hydrogeologist and therefore probably not very useful, unless we can identify a laminar flow or a calibration/optimization problem that can be solved with gradient-based techniques. But maybe there's an interesting problem hiding in a bunch of protein fragments or bone chips that would be suited to someone else's skills?
In other words: I want to attend your "Are there any questions?" talk where you debut the chickosaurus SO BAD. How do we make it happen sooner?
Was Velociraptor a pure scavenger, or simply an opportunistic scavenger?
Considering that dinosaurs managed to hold all the 'large land animal' records for about 135 million years, it seems strange that not only did they all die out at once (leaving only the birds), but that mammals (which remained small throughout the time of the dinosaurs) were able to secure that position rather than the birds. What do you think are the key advantages mammals had over dinosaurs and birds that allowed them to not only survive the K/T extinction event better than the former, but also flourish and dominate the land better than the latter? And in particular, why did these advantages not permit them to take over before the K/T boundary?
Is there any evidence to suggest that dinosaurs used tools to assist them with obtaining food? I've heard of several interesting tactics used by modern-day birds, such as the use of bait to catch fish, or sticks to collect insects from within trees, and am curious as to whether there were any dinosaur species which possessed similar capabilities.
In your view, was the T. Rex primarily an active hunter, a scavenger, or somewhere in between? A variety of models have come out lately describing the possible energetics for theropods and different conclusions have been drawn as to how fast the big guys could move - or how much energy they would have to expend in order to move at a certain pace.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
My daughter has had a fascination with dinosaurs since she was three years old. She is now 16 and plans on becoming a paleontogist. She is currently focusing her studies on science classes like biology and geology. She is also volunteering at a local natural history museum. She is a truly amazing child and incredibly intelligent. She is able to correctly identify many Jurassic, Cambrian, and pre-Cambrian species on sight. She is most fascinated with the Cambrian period and would like to do research on that period.
She is very familiar with your work and has a lot of respect for you. It would be a real treat for her to get any advice you might have for an aspiring paleontologist.
She is also planning on attending the university of Utah. What is your opinion of their paleontology program?
What do you think about the role of paleontology in the deconstruction of religious extremism? Crossing the language and educational barriers with paleontology could widen the world view of many.
Everyone's talking about re-creating famous species like the Woolly Mammoth, Tazmanian Devil, and dinosaurs. Are there any efforts that you have heard of to re-create lesser-known extinct species? Is anyone trying to recreate the Dodo (for food)? Glyptodon (as a pack animal)? The Giant Sloth (for fun)?
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Religion and science are often at odds with one another mainly in the form of creationism vs. evolution. Can religion and science coexist, and if so, how would you handle the debate?
Who are your heroes? Conversely, who are your villains?
You are in inspiration. Your book is pretty awesome. Thank you.
Individuals must choose, decide their "essential" nature rather than having it given from some transcendent source.
Have you found any successful way to educate creationists, particularly those involved in policy or textbook selection?
I hope this comment isn't out of place, but I was wondering on what your opinion is of the market for fossils? It has become so easy to buy and sell fossils - eBay and the Internet - I was wondering if you see this as a threat to palaeontology? I think a lot of people collect fossils as a hobby or as a tangible way to forge a connection with science, so it can generate a lot of interest - which must be a good thing. However, is there a danger when auction houses market fossils as art or decoration, or perhaps investment items? I think there a potential for a lot of parallels with the market for antiquities which has caused a great deal of grief for archaeologists. Has the market got anything to offer palaeontolgy?
My son is a sophomore in college and is consider a career in paleontology. I don't really know how to advise him and not sure of the prospects. He has the passion, grades and ambition. What advice would you have for a young person enter the field and what undergraduate degree would you recommend.
I collect mineral specimens (primarily crystal-populated geodes) from the eastern portions of Fort Peck Lake, working my way along the shoreline. I also find, and collect, interesting invertebrate fossils such as crabs, clams and so forth. Vertebrate fossil collection is, as far as I know, illegal for the average citizen under any circumstances on public land, so I leave them where I find them.
The reason I collect at the shoreline is because the rapid erosion from the lake's waves constantly expose new specimens. However, I've also observed that the same processes wash specimens out into the lake itself, where they are beaten up against rocks and lost in the waters.
Clearly, these specimen losses are caused by the "do not collect vertebrates" laws, a (presumably) unintended consequence.
Would you support a modification to the "do not collect vertebrates" laws at the shoreline in order to preserve these specimens, even if, Darwin forbid, they ended up in a private collection?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I remember reading several years ago about the discovery that dinosaur soft bone marrow had been found.
What are the implications of this and what changes have this discovery lead to in our understanding?
Also how has this changed the handling of fossils?
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
I recall an announcement within the past several years, where they unearthed fossils only to discover that fossilization and decay had not thoroughly occurred, and parts of the soft tissue were still in tact. With such an announcement in mind, what conditions are ripe for such a sample to persist in, and from what periods, and do such scenarios bring viable DNA to the table when talking about integrating it with modern dino-ancestors?
Hello, My name is Chris. I am 12 years old. I was at the Museum of the Rockies this last Summer and I visited several museums across the country and went on a dinosaur dig in Wyoming. Why is it that the T-Rex is called the biggest dinosaur when the Spinosaurus is? I have been wanting to be a Paleontologist since I was very little. What does it take to become a Paleontologist. And why is it that they called it Jurassic Park (the movie) when most of the dinosaurs were from the Cretaseous period? My mom and dad are paying for my college and I want to know where the best school is. I went on a dig in Thermopolis Wyoming over the Summer and worked on a Allosaurus fossil and really enjoyed it. I worked in the sun all day and it was fun! Do you have any digs I could go on? I am in Eastern Washington. Thanks!
Are your experiments all going to have the instincts of a chicken with all these little veloceraptors running around laying eggs, or will they eventually get mad and rip off your hand for stealing eggs every morning. "Oh look another egg, MY HAND!!!" spurt ""spurt""" spurt"""" !! ______ !!
My second question, do you hope to uncover dinosaur behavior in throwing back a chicken, or will they always fall victim to fox and coyote and never learn to gang up on the invader and rip apart the life stealing invaders, which may or not may include you! depending how well you feed them.
My son just graduated from high school. He has wanted to be a paleontologist since he was 3. None of us know what is the best way to go about getting into that career field. Is there a particular course track that he should take in college? What about community colleges as a starting point? Do you even need a college degree? Are there any jobs that would set him on that track? Does he have to move to Montana from Florida for a better start?
//--- John ---//
but could you tell me more about the "curds and whey"?
You're forgetting about "textbook inertia" and fact that anything in a public school science textbook that remotely involves "evolution" has already been diluted, whitewashed, and minimized to make the book acceptable to the state's evangelical Christian gatekeepers. There are probably kids sitting in middle school classrooms *RIGHT NOW* reading more or less the same content their parents did, more for political and budgetary reasons than anything.
I kid you not... when I was in sixth grade (late 80s), my science teacher handed out brand new textbooks on the first day of school. After handing them out, he became visibly irate, then told us to open the book to page 234, tear it out, and throw it away after class without reading it, "because the school board decided it might make us question our religious beliefs, so they ordered teachers to have the offending page removed." He informed us that the trashcan was "over there" (pointing to a spot that was kind of by the door, but far enough out of the way that you'd have had to be really determined to use it) and made a point of looking the other way as we left at the end of class. It was a brilliant act of subversion that could have probably gotten him fired, because you can bet every single kid in the class read the page. Future classes never got to see the page (well, not counting the photocopies some of my friends and I made & passed out like contraband to some younger friends when we were in 8th grade), but he was able to make a small difference in the lives of at least one class. I know it was page 234, because I still have it ;-)
(I started using it to annoy creationists. Annoying Creationists is the moral equivalent of pulling the wings off flies, but it is ethically much more defensible. And much more fun.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Wrong country. Don't confuse the insanity (word chosen carefully) of American public policy with the civilized world.
I'll believe your description of your country's problems. I was in the first year of comprehensive intake to a former Technical school (i.e. all the best exam-passers and the second-best exam-passers had been filtered off into better-funded education, and the labourers, painters and decorators -to-be had been sent to this school. Until my cohort.), and it was the first time that the school had ever had the option (or the possibility) of presenting academic subjects. So, they had to build science labs, and smaller classrooms. And buy text books. Most of our texts were published in the previous couple of years as "transfer teaching" material for the intake classes of one of the local universities (50,000+ students/year), who were almost entirely "mature students". Pretty good stuff in general. And yes, evolution was totally un-controversial.
(My Religious Education master marked off one of my exams as "Score 100% ; top of the year! As an atheist, Aidan should be ashamed of himself!" But with 6 different religions in his class, he had to be careful.)
What have you done to undermine your state's religion today?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"