Book Progress #6

I was able to get another five pages done today, although (as always) I'm not entirely satisfied with them. There are so many juicy details and excellent narratives that it's difficult to get them all in, and it is sometimes difficult to discuss a topic that I know something about but also will require the use of my library for. Rather than run to look up everything at once, I decided to just keep writing and put up the basic framework of what I want to say, and I'll go back to fill in the details a bit later (which will also give me an opportunity to trim the fat a bit). At the moment, though, I have the strongest vision for the human evolution chapter, especially the conclusion of which that I plan to be the end of the book. As always, the sections I wrote today appear 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 - The Neanderthal fossils get named - Dubois goes to Indonesia - "Java Man" - The discovery of "Peking Man" - Dart's Australopithecus - - What makes us human?