Word: paleontologists
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1980
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Today more and more scientists seem to be matching their talent for experimentation with a surprising gift for exposition. One of them is a Harvard paleontologist named Stephen Jay Gould, 39, author of two pellucid collections of essays on evolution (Ever Since Darwin, The Panda's Thumb). Another is Dr. Lewis Thomas, 66, whose humane writings on biology and medicine in the pages of the New England Journal of Medicine became the basis for two bestsellers (The Lives of a Cell, The Medusa and the Snail). Others include Physicists Jeremy Bernstein, 50, a regular contributor to The New Yorker; Robert...
Since his death in 1955, the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was also an accomplished paleontologist, has become something of a cult figure. Millions of readers have been fascinated by his writings, which often put him at odds with ecclesiastical authorities. Particularly controversial were his views on evolution, which, he held, moves in an upward direction with increasing domination of spirit over matter. Now the saintly Teilhard stands accused of a little playful tampering with evolution. Last week he was implicated as a conspirator in one of the most famous scientific hoaxes: the notorious Piltdown caper...
...masterminded the hoax? Dawson was suspected, but some scholars doubt that he had the skills or materials to carry it out. In Natural History, Harvard Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould writes that the young Teilhard, then a student in England and Dawson's friend, could easily have supplied some bones. One bit of evidence: a Teilhard letter written years later to the British scholar Kenneth Oakley, in which the priest commits what Gould calls a "fatal error." Teilhard says that Dawson personally brought him to the site where the second skull was found. "This cannot be," says Gould, because Dawson...
Gould's theory stirred an instant uproar. Says American Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, a friend of Teilhard's: "I don't think it was in his character." J.S. Werner, who with Oakley helped expose the forgery, doubts that Teilhard would have risked his burgeoning scientific career with such a ruse. Gould remains convinced it was a youthful joke that succeeded so well it made a confession difficult. Says he: "The burden of proof must now rest with those who would hold Father Teilhard blameless...
...Though they were not very formidable-males weighed no more than 5½ kg (12 lbs.), females about 80% of that-they could take on a ferocious appearance. Whenever the males competed with one another for females or were threatened, they would bare their fanglike canines. Comments Duke University Paleontologist Elwyn Simons: "A nasty little thing...