Darwin Day 2012

Today is Darwin Day, or to put it another way, the 203rd anniversary of Darwin’s birth. You can find various posts around the web, as well as various activities to participate in, by searching on “Darwin Day.” My own contribution is below.

Lost Microscope Slides Of Hooker and Darwin Rediscovered

This is cool. Falcon-Lang’s find was a collection of 314 slides of specimens collected by Darwin and other members of his inner circle, including John Hooker — a botanist and dear friend of Darwin — and the Rev. John Henslow, Darwin’s mentor at Cambridge, whose daughter later married Hooker. The first slide pulled out of [...]

Interesting Science News From Around The Web

Ruminant diets and the Miocene extinction of European great apes in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. From the abstract: The successful evolutionary radiations of European hominoids and pliopithecoids came to an end during the Late Miocene. Using ruminant diets as environmental proxies, it becomes possible to detect variations in vegetation over time with the [...]

Darwinism Illustrated

The picture below comes from Darwinism Illustrated: Wood Engravings Explanatory of the Theory of Evolution by George Romanes. There are over a hundred such illustrations.

The Experimental Darwin: More on Microscopes and Plants

Darwin was quite experienced with the microscope. In this experiment we see another aspect of the “experimental Darwin”. Here Darwin is examining the effect of ammonia on plants (this is part of his research in insectivorous plants)

Book Review: Darwin In Galapagos Footsteps To A New World

I was somewhat surprised to receive a copy of Darwin in Galapagos: Footsteps to a New World. Since I moved here from ScienceBlogs I haven’t really requested any review copies of books. Mainly because my audience has shrunk dramatically. Darwin in Galapagos: Footsteps to a New World is an interesting book, published this year, that [...]

150th Anniversary of The Origin of Species

And what should arrive in my mailbox for review? A copy of Darwin in Galapagos: Footsteps to a New World. Cool! I’ll be reviewing it when time permits. At any rate, here is a bit from The Origin of Species:

Darwin and The Origin of Life

The journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres has an interesting paper on Darwin’s views on the origin of life. The paper can be found here. The short version is that Darwin felt that the origin of life could be explained by natural mechanisms and that such an explanation was beyond the scope of [...]

Charles Darwin and The Gibraltar Skull

Science has an interesting entry in its Origins: A History of Beginnings series. The entry concerns Charles Darwin and the Gibraltar Neanderthal skull

Vestigial Organs and Relaxed Selection

On my view of descent with modification, the origin of rudimentary organs is simple. We have plenty of cases of rudimentary organs in our domestic productions,—as the stump of a tail in tailless breeds,—the vestige of an ear in earless breeds,—the reappearance of minute dangling horns in hornless breeds of cattle, more especially, according to [...]

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science Honors Darwin

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science is honoring Charles Darwin with a number of supplemental volumes exploring evolution. The series – called In Light of Evolution is up to three at this point. Better yet, they all seem to be open access.

A Question About Natural Selection and Adaptation

Well, it’s not really a question. I am currently reading Adaptation edited by Rose and Lauder. One of the contributions is an interesting piece by Ron Amundson. In discussing Darwin he makes the following observation:

Darwin’s Cracked Egg

PhysOrg.Com has an interesting story about a recently discovered egg. The egg was discovered by a museum volunteer who has been working on sorting and reboxing the bird egg collection at Cambridge University’s Zoology Museum. The egg in question, belonging to the common Tinamou, was collected in South America by Charles Darwin: And records seem [...]

Darwin Quote On Ascidians And A Request For Help

I am currently rereading Darwin’s The Descent of Man: and Selection in Relation to Sex and found an interesting statement.

Darwin The Human Being

Since today is Darwin’s birthday you can expect that the blogosphere will be buzzing with posts about Darwin. Most will be about Darwin’s scientific achievements, some will be eloquent and insightful. Others will focus on the conflict between evolution and religion. Since, however, it is Darwin’s birthday, I would like to focus on the man. [...]