Neil Shubin and his estimable artist, Kalliopi Monoyios (who also illustrated WEIT), have made available sets of Powerpoint slides from Your Inner Fish. All are welcome to use them.
Tiktaalik, of course, features prominently. Many of these are great for teaching about evolution and the nature of transitional forms; you can find them here.
That’s great, because it’s actually true that media doing a a good job really laying out the case for evolution didn’t exist a couple of decades ago. Probably it’s one of the smaller reasons why we have so much anti-science nonsense today.
The only thing constructive the IDiots ever did was to provoke great responses to them like this, and, to be sure, WEIT.
Glen Davidson
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
I was sort of disappointed in the mammalian ear slide. I teach Human A&P winter quarters and emphasize the evolutionary history of the human body more than my fellow profs (one of whom *leads* the Campus Crusade for Christ, if you can believe that). I think the slide I pulled off the internet somewhere illustrates the quadrate-articular/incus-malleus relationship more clearly.
But overall, great stuff!
KP, just curious, what did you find disappointing about the figure and how did the image you downloaded from the internet do better? Thanks for the constructive critique!
Kalliopi Monoyios
KM, I just posted a reply, but for some reason it posted as a new comment. See below.
Oh good, this will make the ebook so much more readable!
http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu is a wonderful web site.
Well, it was only slide #3 in that series (Ch. 10) that bugged me. The right side of the illustration showing the evolution of the stapes is fine. However you appear to only show the derivation of the malleus from the articular bone in the jaw. The third bone, the incus, is derived from the quadrate which was part of the lower skull in the reptile ancestor. I was uncertain about the whole thing because none of the bones are labeled (even the stapes). I think it would be helpful to show the rest of the skull with all the bones labeled so we can track the evolutionary history of the stapes, incus and malleus.
The illustration I use is very similar (maybe identical, I don’t have it on the computer I’m using right now) to the one Greg used in a post here at WEIT. Befor you follow the link (below), let me state VERY CLEARLY that the quality of your illustrations is outstanding. The only reason I claimed to be “disappointed” was that I was hoping for something of that quality I could use in my teaching that would clearly show how the jaw joint & individual bones track through the different example species. I have nursing students who don’t have a lot of background in biology to begin with and they need a lot of hand-holding when I teach them anything involving evolution.
The link:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/your-ear-bones-came-from-your-jaws/
It has been a year since I read YIF, so I can’t remember if this was one of the illustrations in the book, the full context for it in the chapter, or whether I noticed it then (the book is not in front of me right now either). I hope this is helpful. Your illustrations are great in both YIF and WEIT!