Science Is Constantly Evolving
Discover the latest in climate change and evolution education news.
This week on Fossil Friday, I bring you another green thing from ancient history. Of course, this plant is actually still around today, even though this fossil dates to the Miocene. This small leaf is about the size of a quarter and was found in Southern California. …
About two thousand students in the eighth grade in California’s Rialto Unified School District—outside San Bernardino, in what Californians like to call the Inland Empire— were recently asked to “read and discuss multiple, credible articles on this issue, and write an argumentative essay, based…
Last Sunday's episode of Cosmos nicely weaves together the history of science popularization with the development of a theory of electricity, the theory that makes it possible to disseminate shows like Cosmos so widely. This is made easy by the fact that Michael Faraday, a…
The Showtime program Years of Living Dangerously, which is now partly through its first and—given its low ratings—possibly only season, blends celebrity star power with insights and investigations into climate change. As to whether the show is able successfully to motivate people to…
Not the likeliest of pairings, of course, whatever the latter is supposed to be, but bear with me while I explain. Language Log, one of the few blogs that I read for pleasure, was founded by two linguists, Mark Liberman and Geoffrey Pullum, features posts by them and a handful of additional…
Photo Credit: Forest Clay via Compfight cc Last Friday, I shared a "green" fossil to celebrate "bike to work week". Many of you recognized this plant as an ancestral oak—but which one? There were many guesses: Red oak, black oak, turkey oak, pin oak, cherrybark oak, but none of these were…
This week’s Cosmos episode, “The Lost Worlds of Planet Earth,” was an extraordinary tour of geologic ideas, exposing television audiences to fascinating events most had probably never heard of. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s fact-rich explanations enlightened and informed even as they entertained…
NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of of Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt and Co., 2014). The preview consists of a portion of chapter 11, "The Rhino Gets an Ultrasound," in which Kolbert discusses programs aimed at breeding the…
Now that spring has arrived, I thought I'd share a leaf that might seem a little too familiar! Well it should—it's from a genus that is found all over North America today. Its closest living species is still found in the Southeast. Can you tell me the modern species, as well as this…