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- David Ng is Director of the AMBL at the University of British Columbia - fancy speak for a science teacher.

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- Benjamin Cohen is an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia. He studies the place of science in environmental history, ethics, and policy. He also writes other stuff.

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Archaeopteryx lithographica tangles with the devil

Category: The Art/Science (Non?)Divide Building
Posted on: August 1, 2008 8:00 AM, by Benjamin Cohen

Proof of "a threshold species between modern birds and their prehistoric dinosaur relatives" hanging out with Mephistopheles in Flight. Though don't take my use of the word "proof" too sincerely.

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Archaeopteryx lithographica
(Berlin Specimen)
[Convergences #33]


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Eugène Delacroix, Mephistopheles in Flight


An excerpt from R.A. Villanueva, the contributor of the images and mini-narrative to Lawrence Weschler's Convergences series:

Those who, generally speaking, follow the gospel of Darwin assign special significance to the Archaeopteryx as a liminal fossil--proof of a threshold species between modern birds and their prehistoric dinosaur relatives quite literally "set in stone." One might be surprised to note, then, that many of the websites devoted to posting images of the skeleton are not scientific but overtly anti-evolution.

It would seem that creationists have vilified the Archaeopteryx, casting it as a "hoax," a "fraud." What appears to be a feathered reptile pressed into Solnhofen limestone, they counter, is nothing more than a poorly designed "forgery" on par with the Piltdown skull, a conspiracy by scientists who would abuse authority for profit and personal gain....

Full work up: here.

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