Book Progress #5

Even though I was busy yesterday (3-hour lab and 2 lab reports due), I got into the writing groove and was able to produce about five pages of new material. I've been jumping around from chapter to chapter a bit, writing on whatever I feel most interested in on any given day, and yesterday was all about human evolution.

Edward Tyson's 1699 dissection of a juvenile chimpanzee provided a natural jumping-off point, and Harriet Ritvo's excellent book The Platypus and the Mermaid has proved to be an excellent resource for issues dealing with finding "Man's Place in Nature" (with a little help from The Flamingo's Smile and The Leopard's Spots, too). I'm also hoping to find more resources about the scientific and cultural impact of the description of the gorilla during the 19th century, as I think it is a significant event that is too-often ignored or relegated to the sidelines.

I wish I had more time to commit to writing. Some days I feel a bit strained, like I'm groping around for the next idea to connect to the mass I've already put together, but yesterday I had a strong idea of where I wanted to go. Unfortunately I had to run off to lab, but hopefully I'll be able to pick up where I left off this weekend. As always, new ideas and passages are represented by the "teasers" in bold.

Introduction

Huxley's rejoinder to Wilberforce at Oxford - Darrow puts Bryan in the hot seat - Behe's astrological mishap - One long argument - Flickering candles in the dark - Monstrous myths - Evolutionary archetypes -

Whales

Koch's Missourium - The king of the seas flees to Europe - Maybe Basilosaurus, maybe not - Huxley's overlooked insight - Fast & furious fossil finds -

Birds and Dinosaurs

Noah's ravens vacation in New England - Hitchcock's Jurassic birds - A little fossil birdie told me about evolution - A misplaced feather - From London to Berlin - The source of Huxley's inspiration - Megalosaurus = an ossified, fossilized, underdeveloped chick - The unimportance of Archaeopteryx - Hypsilophodon as a good transition - Problems with the Pachypoda - How did we get such beautiful fossils? - Ornithosuchus or theropods? - The case of the missing clavicles - 75 years of pseudoscuhian narrative - Barnum Brown's forgotten Daptosaurus - Ostrom's "terrible claw" - "Tetrapteryx" and Microraptor

Human Evolution

Tyson's dissection of a "pigmie" - A chimp's place in the Chain - Where are the "missing links?" - White's 1799 attempt to save the Chain - The Neanderthal that was mistaken for an Irishman

I had previously hoped to work some more tonight, but I have a lecture to go to about phytoliths and plant microfossils this afternoon. I might drop by the local library book sale, too, and I'm going to be taking in three kittens that were on the euthanasia list of a kill shelter, so if I am going to write it's going to be in the wee hours of the morning.

Still, I'm starting to feel good about this project, like it's something I can reasonably achieve. Being rejected from two paleontology internships in the span of a week has helped fuel my enthusiasm for writing, and I have to admit that I feel that I have something to prove. My motivation may wax and wane depending on the day, but I really feel like I might actually finish this project whereas I previously would talk about it but didn't quite believe myself.