Media project: Articles on new research about events in the history of life, Carboniferous to Pleistocene
Due at the start
of class on Thursday, Nov 29th, 2001.
Please look at the directions
for the previous Media article. I would like you to follow the same directions.
This time I believe there will be more to choose from, since there are so many
media stories about dinosaurs, hominid evolution, mammoths and mastodons, and
other large vertebrates.
Please answer the following
concisely. I am not looking for long comprehensive explanations, but for short
insightful answers that
show you get the main point.
There isn’t one “right” answer. There are numerous sources of literature and numerous
ways to answer each
question, so I don’t expect to
see any identical papers.
Questions:
1. In one sentence, what is the
most important major new finding expressed in the original article? [Think big
– thousands of new species of fossil animals are found and described every year,
and countless billions of fossils are found in various contexts….so why did
these fossils (or other information) make the news?]
2. In one sentence, why was it
surprising or important?
3. In one or a few sentences,
what is the basis for the discovery? That is, what is the age and locality of
the fossils? Is the discovery a new
fossil find, or re-interpretation
of fossils that had been previously described?
4. Most scientific discoveries,
even important ones, are not reported in popular media. What do you suppose is
the reason this particular scientific discovery was shared with the lay public?
5. Contrast the original article
and the popular media articles. Did you find any apparent errors in the popular
media articles?
6. Who funded the research?
[look in the acknowledgments of the original article; it may or may not say]
7. Suggest an interesting,
soluble question that might be pursued in the future that stems from this
particular research.
What to turn in:
Your answers typed on
standard letter-sized paper, with your name and the topic of the papers written
at the top.
Copies of each of the three articles
stapled to your answers.