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Study: Key part of evolution eludes museums' guests

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070330/LOCAL/703300345/-1/news

By ANDREW TAN

Special to The Sun

      A new Florida Museum study found that less than one-third of museum visitors could accurately explain a key concept of evolution.

      The study was to be presented at the 56th annual meeting of the Southeastern Section of the Geological Society of America being held Thursday and today at the Hyatt Regency in Savannah, Ga.

      The study found that 31 percent of visitors could accurately explain natural selection, which is a key part of evolution.

      Co-author of the study, Bruce MacFadden, Florida Museum vertebrate paleontology curator, said, "It's the fundamental mechanism for how things evolve."

      Natural selection is the process in which the best traits for a species are passed on in a population, MacFadden said.

      MacFadden said people usually have a good understanding of fossils and paleontology, which is the study of things in prehistoric time.

      However, people did have trouble understanding exactly when events were, MacFadden said.

      He said the problem is that most people tend to think on the human time scale, which is on the order of hundreds of years, instead of the geological time scale, which is millions and billions of years.

      The problems weren't in understanding when dinosaurs lived, but instead the time difference between when humans and dinosaurs walked the Earth.

      Dinosaurs lived from 200 million to 65 million years ago, while humans, depending on how you define one, have only existed for several million years, he said.

      According to Encarta Encyclopedia, bipedalism - walking on two legs, which is a defining trait of a human - began 4 million years ago. But the oldest known fossils that have similar skeletal features to modern humans are around 195,000 years old.

      The study analyzed 366 people who had visited one of six museums around the country, including the Florida Museum of Natural History.

      MacFadden said Betty Dunckel, head of informal science education at the Florida museum, and Shari Ellis, project coordinator in informal science education from UF, also helped with the study.

      Dunckel, principal investigator of the study, said people were very willing to participate in the study.

      "It's a topic our natural history visitors are interested in," she said.

      While MacFadden studied the gaps in knowledge of evolution, a zoology doctoral student he is advising will present a study of her own.

      Larisa Grawe DeSantis is presenting a way to teach evolution.

      She said the idea is to teach students, grades six through 12, the concepts of evolution without ever using the word "evolution."

      Often some people will close their minds when the word comes up because of their beliefs, she said.

      


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