[Note: I know I'm about a month late coming to this one, but it still provided for some good blog fodder. It seems that the initial response at Pharyngula ended up changing the summary I discuss [see comments section], and that's definitely a good thing. The show has also been pushed back to July, it seems. Rather than scrap the post due to relative irrelevancy, I'll leave it up as I think it still speaks to some continuing problems in science communication.]
About a month or so ago I was contacted by someone from the History Channel about where to find some good images of prehistoric life on the web. The person who had asked said that they would be used in a show about evolution, and I pointed them towards a few resources and artists. I never did find out what the show was called or when it was set to air, but my best guess is that it is the "Evolve" series that PZ has mentioned, and the summary of the first episode isn't giving me a lot to be hopeful about. Here's the synopsis of the premiere (lifted from Pharyngula);
SERIES PREMIERE!
EVOLVE:
EYESEyes are one of evolution's most useful and prevalent inventions, equipping approximately 95 percent of living species. They exist in many different forms across nature, having evolved convergently across different species. Learn how the ancestors of jellyfish may have been the first to evolve light-sensitive cells. In the pre-Cambrian era, insects, in particular the dragonfly, would take the compound eye to new heights. Find out how dinosaurs adapted their eyes to become such successful hunters of prey. And while dinosaurs remained at the top of the food chain for 150 million years, tiny early mammals developed night vision to populate the night as a survival technique. Finally, learn how primates underwent several adaptations to their eyes to better exploit their new habitat, and how the ability to see colors helped them find food.
Throughout eons of evolution, the natural world has played host to a never-ending competition. Since the dawn of time roughly 99% of all species have become extinct. In order to survive, all creatures, including man, must treat life as a battlefield and master the natural weapons and defenses that have evolved: Tyrannosaurus Rex's 13-inch canines; the gecko's Velcro-like toe pads; the bald eagle's telescopic vision that is capable of spotting a hare a mile away. What is the history of these evolutions and how did they come about? They didn't just appear arbitrarily, they evolved for a common reason - to give these animals a critical edge in interspecies warfare. To evolve is to conquer!
The new series EVOLVE traces the history of the key innovations that have driven nature's evolutionary arms race from the dawn of life to today, from the anatomical (eyes, jaws, and body armor) to the behavioral (movement, communication, and sex). This 13-part series will deftly blend spectacular live-action natural history sequences, CGI, epic docudrama, and experimental science to illustrate our and our fellow species' eternal struggle for survival on earth.
PREMIERE: Tuesday, June 17 at 10pm/2am ET/PT
LENGTH: 2 hours
REPEATS: Sunday, June 22 at 11pm/3am ET/PT
PRODUCED BY: Optomen Productions, Inc.
Hmm, where to start, where to start... let's go with "In the pre-Cambrian era, insects, in particular the dragonfly, would take the compound eye to new heights." This has got to be a mistake. The Precambrian is an informal name for everything before the Cambrian, from the formation of the earth about 4.6 billion years ago to the close of the Ediacaran, about 542 million years ago. The time span is so large that saying that an evolutionary event occurred during the Precambrian isn't telling you very much at all. That aside, there were no hexapods, insects, or dragonflies until well after the Cambrian. The earliest known hexapods (six-legged arthropods, essentially insects and their close relatives) are from the Devonian (about 416 to 359 million years ago), as is the earliest known insect. Anything closely related to dragonflies (Odonata) did not appear until the Carboniferous, more specifically the younger part known as the Pennsylvanian (about 318 to 299 million years ago), so I have no idea how the person who wrote the summary could say that dragonflies existed before the Cambrian.
Next up, "Find out how dinosaurs adapted their eyes to become such successful hunters of prey." It may be a minor point, more semantic than anything else, but one of my pet peeves is when it is inferred that organisms adapted themselves to gain a particular function. Predatory dinosaurs had their eyes adapted by evolutionary pressures, they didn't have a meeting where they decided to redesign where their eyes would be ("Eyes in the front, I like to hunt. Eyes on the side, I like to hide."). The same could be said of the next sentence, "And while dinosaurs remained at the top of the food chain for 150 million years, tiny early mammals developed night vision to populate the night as a survival technique." This makes it sound as if there was a mammalian opsin lab somewhere, multituberculates working around the clock to come up with a way to find their way around at night. I know I'm taking small errors to an absurd level, but language that makes it seem like animals are adapting themselves (rather than being adapted) easily confuses evolutionary concepts.
The next section is so full of "nature red in tooth and claw" that it makes the phrase "struggle for existence" seem like a major understatement;
Throughout eons of evolution, the natural world has played host to a never-ending competition. Since the dawn of time roughly 99% of all species have become extinct. In order to survive, all creatures, including man, must treat life as a battlefield and master the natural weapons and defenses that have evolved: Tyrannosaurus Rex's 13-inch canines; the gecko's Velcro-like toe pads; the bald eagle's telescopic vision that is capable of spotting a hare a mile away. What is the history of these evolutions and how did they come about? They didn't just appear arbitrarily, they evolved for a common reason - to give these animals a critical edge in interspecies warfare. To evolve is to conquer!
Whoever wrote this has probably been doing too many summaries of war shows for the History Channel lately. "To evolve is to conquer! This is Sparta! Grrrrr!" Competition for resources is a major part of natural selection, but this makes it sound like species are declaring war on other species they don't like to that they can rule the world (remember Army Ants?). Granted, some species are often in direct conflict and often kill each other, lions and spotted hyenas most immediately coming to mind, but competition often drives evolution to create diversity rather than one species entirely wiping out a competing one. The last line even has a tinge of directionality about it, as if creatures were evolving so that they can conquer others, and it gets things the wrong way around. At the very least, (and I am borrowing this from one of my favorite Sandwalk posts) "Evolution is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over many generations." Saying "To evolve is to conquer!" doesn't make any sense at all.
As far as the "natural weapons" go, however, there is one particular example that needs some correction/clarification; "Tyrannosaurus Rex's 13-inch canines." As far as I am aware, the largest Tyrannosaurus rex tooth known comes from "Sue" and is about 12 inches long, which includes the root of the tooth. The part that would actually be sinking into the back of a hapless hadrosaur is much shorter than the full 12-inch length of the tooth (see this website for a quick summary and some images). Furthermore, while Tyrannosaurus exhibits a heterodont condition (the teeth show differences in different parts of the jaw) it definitely did not have canines, the cone-shaped teeth used for piercing in mammals between the incisors and the premolars. (Non-mammalian synapsids like the gorgonopsids are heterodont and have impressive canines, as well, and there are a few reptiles with "pseudo-canines" like Heterodontosaurus. h/t to johannes for reminding me.) The summary makes it sound like we're dealing with a saber-toothed T. rex!
Could this series turn out to be good? Definitely, but being that I don't have cable (or even get basic TV reception in my apartment) I'm going to have to wait a while before I see how it turns out. I hope that the sorts of mistakes I picked out above are just the result of sloppy writing and editing, but then again the History Channel plays a lot of crap about UFOs and other nonsense so I can't say I'm particularly impressed with their track record. If the show turns out to be all about natural "warfare" and is chock-full-of-errors I have the feeling that creationists will be mining it for material to present on their websites, books, and presentations. Indeed, the show might even do a fair bit of harm by presenting a 2-dimensional, error-laden version of what evolution is; their intentions might be in the right place, but the content may confuse more than illuminate.
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Could this series turn out to be good?
Dude, it's on The [Learn Nothing From] History Channel (aka The Hitlery Channel)... I wouldn't hold out much hope.
Since sending that original press release to P.Z. -- and the brouhaha that ensued -- I received a new, revised press announcement from The History Channel. The new wording actually restored a bit of my faith in the program:
I was really looking forward to that, but it wasn't on their schedule. I guess it's been pushed back to July. I think it could be interesting.
Yeah, the new premiere date is supposedly July 29.
My biggest beef is with this line:
They didn't just appear arbitrarily, they evolved for a common reason - to give these animals a critical edge in interspecies warfare.
Actually, they DID appear arbitrarily, and they DIDN'T evolve for a reason. They were all arbitrary traits that happened to be reinforced by natural selection. Nothing evolves for a reason, but that's the most common mistake that people make when trying to understand evolution. You'd think that a show to teach layfolk about evolution would want to address that.
> it definitely did not have canines, the cone-shaped teeth used for
> piercing in mammals between the incisors and the premolars.
Canines also exist in non-mammalian synapsids, most prominently so in the saber-toothed gorgonopsians and therocephalians of the late Permian.
Caniniform teeth on the maxilla might actually be the primitive condition in synapsids, or so says palaeos.
Pseudo-canines were also present in some crocs, and in heterodontosaurs among the dinosaurs.
> The summary makes it sound like we're dealing with a
> saber-toothed T. rex!
The History Channel knows about Spec? ;-)
Well worth noting, johannes. I actually thought of mentioning the non-mammalian synapsids but I wanted to keep things simple. I think I'm going to go back and edit things, though, as it does seem like a bit of an oversight.
I didn't immediately understand why you were complaining about the dragonfly bit... until I saw the "pre-Cambrian", that I had spontaneously read "Carboniferous" (because of the dragonfly mention, maybe). It's not impossible that it's just a typo.