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Re: Alabama senator Hillary Herbert & birds with teeth
I liked it. Dr. Bakker's remarks at the end of the program were quite
eloquent:
"Bob Bakker, Paleontologist: They both were called by the beauty of the big
game hunt. The big game hunt in deep time, and thatâs a very special
thing."
There is a transcript of the program at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/dinosaur-tran
script/
Mary
In a message dated 1/22/2011 6:51:10 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
tholtz@umd.edu writes:
On Sat, January 22, 2011 3:04 pm, Mar Qos Aker wrote:
> Fellow dino-lovers:
>
> That Dinosaur Wars American Experience was painful to watch. Its
> hodge-podging of dates and dis/dys linear plot (and I think it's being
> courteous to say it that way) show mere a lack of coherence.
I didn't find it so bad, although I would have (do, actually, in class)
emphasize that dinosaurs were originally known from England-and Europe
more generally-but were known only from fragmentary material until
Hadrosaurus and then the western dinosaurs. And I would have emphasized
that the "war" was over fossil mammals as well (which they did come to now
and again, but didn't include in (for example) the species counts between
the two.)
Also, there is a tendency of these things to be very pro-Cope, because
(let's face it) Marsh was a jerk as a person. BUT one could also highlight
Cope's obsessions with generating a larger total publication record, or
(okay, this is a bit Whiggish, but...) Cope's lack of acceptance of
natural selection (as opposed to Marsh's strong embrace of and promotion
of it).
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