Archive: Around Town

The Paleontological Research Institution and its Museum of the Earth (PRI), along with Cornell University, the Lab of Ornithology and the Kitchen Theatre, celebrate the 202nd birthday and lasting legacy of Charles Darwin, Feb. 6 – 13. This year will be the sixth annual Ithaca Darwin Days featuring lectures and panel discussions on Cornell's campus, a birthday reception in commemoration of Darwin's legacy and a family day filled with fun activities including live dogs at the Museum of the Earth.

Darwin and Domestication is this years’ theme.  In the “Origin of Species”, Darwin dedicates the first several chapters to considering domesticated animals and plants as a model for the concept of descent with modification. Most of us forget, or perhaps never realized, that grains, fruits, vegetables and even dogs are the product of rapid evolutionary change -- through human rather than “natural" selection. Darwin used breeders of livestock and plants as examples to demonstrate that the theory of natural selection mirrored the same process that a quality dog breeder or farmer would employ, selecting for desirable traits.

“A frequently stated reason for not accepting evolution is that it cannot be “seen”. Indeed, among much of the general public, there seems to be a widespread belief that evolution is something completely foreign to most people’s lives --  that it is somehow relevant only to some obscure corners of nature, such as fossil horses, or that the evidence for it is extremely limited, arcane, and tentative. The reality could not be more different. Evolution is almost literally everywhere around us. And nowhere is this more clearly visible than in the domesticated plants and animals that make every aspect of our lives possible. One of Darwin’s most brilliant insights was that domestication provided a window into both the evidence for and the mechanism of evolutionary change Domestication is not just a metaphor for evolution. It is evolution.” said Dr. Warren D. Allmon, Director of PRI.

Darwin Days, in existence since 2000, is an international celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday (February 12) and ideas. Ithaca's Darwin Days, now in its sixth year, is a key component of PRI’s Evolution Project which centers on the theme that the evolution of life is a central unifying principle of modern science, and that evolution is integrally connected with much of our understanding of how Earth systems work and evolve. PRI's world-class collections of fossils help tell the story of the evolution of the Earth, and its programming helps educators, students, and the public to understand what evolution is and how scientists study it.

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