‘Explore Evolution' exhibit focuses on cutting-edge science
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By Algis J. Laukaitis/Lincoln Journal Star
No giant portraits of a bearded Charles Darwin hang in the new “Explore Evolution” gallery at the University of Nebraska State Museum. And don’t look for big photographic images of the famous “monkey trial” of 1925, where schoolteacher John Scopes was convicted of violating a ban on teaching evolution.
What visitors will find are dancing flies, whale fossils from Pakistan, life-size images of male and female chimps and bigger-than-life models of the HIV virus and the DNA double-helix molecule.
“DNA is definitely a unifying object,” said Judy Diamond, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor and associate director of the museum.
The exhibits are designed to tell the complex story of evolution from a scientific perspective, Diamond said. They are not there to sway people one way or another about the controversial ideas surrounding the origins of the human race and the animal world.
“We’re a science museum and our mission is to educate people about science,” Diamond said. “We felt it was appropriate to show how scientists do research on evolution. I didn’t feel it was in our mission to discuss the controversy about science and religion. I think there are better forums in our society to do that.”
Museum director Priscilla Grew said the primary goal of the exhibit was to focus on mainstream science and the understanding of this scientific research — not to present both sides of the issue.
“We’re not trying to be anti-religion or anti-politics … we’re trying to present to visitors the best scientific information,” Grew said. “We’re not trying to go beyond science.”
“Explore Evolution” was developed in partnership with six natural history museums and 4-H organizations in the Midwest and South. UNL was the lead institution for the project, which was funded through a $2.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Other participants include science museums at Oklahoma, Michigan, Minnesota, Kansas and Texas.
Most of the displays were developed by the Science Museum of Minnesota in collaboration with noted science writer Carl Zimmer, NU museum scientific illustrator Angie Fox and Diamond, who spearheaded the project.
“It was a real fun challenge because writing for a museum display — where you only got a couple of sentences to talk about some complicated science — it’s a pretty big challenge,” Zimmer said.
Zimmer said the selection of exhibits represents the “cutting-edge” of scientific research on evolution. His favorite? The one comparing the DNA of chimps and humans.
“It’s so immediate and obviously so direct because that’s who we are,” Zimmer said. “We are humans and it helps to show how we fit into evolution.”
Scientists recently deciphered the DNA of chimpanzees, the closest living relative of humans. According to press reports, an international team of researchers identified virtually all of the roughly 3 billion building blocks of chimp DNA.
Depending on how the comparison is made, the DNA between humans and chimps is about 96 percent to almost 99 percent identical, scientists found.
The exhibit is centered around the work of six scientific teams that are making important discoveries. Diamond said there were thousands of projects to choose from and the museum consulted with advisory boards and other museum directors before making a final selection. It looked for projects that could be translated to the learning level of children but also held visual appeal.
The scientific teams explored how life has evolved for creatures as small as an HIV virus to as large as an ancestral whale. They focused on the following forces of evolution:
Variation — In all species, individuals differ in genetic makeup, producing variations in physical features.
Inheritance — Individuals pass some genetic material to offspring.
Selection — Some individuals have genes that help them survive better or produce more offspring. These offspring, in turn, are more likely to survive and create offspring of their own. As a result, their genes become more common in the entire population.
Time — Over time, selection results in changes in species. These changes may take days, decades or millions of years.
These four basic forces of evolution are found throughout the exhibit.
“We wanted to show how similar principles are at work in the evolution of organisms — no matter how different they are,” Grew said.
Children and adults will most likely be drawn to the huge orb of the HIV virus. A handle on the side allows visitors to pull out a panel that reveals a larger-than-life view of the deadly virus.
The DNA exhibit that explores the differences between chimpanzee and human DNA by asking them to find a figure called “Paabo” also should be a big hit.
Similar to the popular “Where’s Waldo?” books, the figure (a drawing of Svante Paabo, who is conducting the research) represents the different DNA base pairs between the two species.
Other exhibit highlights:
Diatoms — Scientists have discovered a new species of diatoms, a one-celled algae found only in Yellowstone Lake. The multi-media display explores why diatoms evolved and under what climatic conditions.
Ants and fungus — Explores the relationship of farming ants, the fungus crop they grow for food, the pests that attack the fungus, and bacteria that produces an antibiotic that kills the pest.
Hawaiian flies — Drosophila flies, which arrived on the Hawaiian Islands several million years ago, have evolved into more than 800 species that occur nowhere else in the world. The display explores some of their behaviors, courtship rituals and sounds. Visitors can try to imitate their sounds via a “fly karaoke” device and compare visual traces of their songs with those made by flies.
Finches — Finches and beak size are the focus of this exhibit exploring the work of Princeton University evolutionary biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant on the Galapagos Islands. The Grants show how beak size enabled certain species of finches to survive more easily during dry and wet years and how other finch species adopted through evolution in a very short time.
DNA — This exhibit compares the DNA of humans and chimpanzees and asks visitors to find the differences in base pairs between the two species. Scientists say human and chimps evolved from a common ancestor about 5 to 6 million years ago. Since then, the two have become very different even though their DNA is almost identical.
Whales — Modern ocean-going whales weren’t always swimmers. Scientists believe they evolved from a four-legged land mammal that lived about 55 million years ago. This exhibit explores fossil evidence of a transitional species found in Pakistan.
A teaching guide, “Virus and the Whale: Exploring Evolution in Creatures Small and Large,” will be available for use in classrooms and 4-H camps.
Reach Algis J. Laukaitis at 473-7243 or alaukaitis@journalstar.com.
Who’s involved?
Scientists involved the projects include: Cameron R. Currie, University of Wisconsin; Sherilyn C. Fritz, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Philip D. Gingerich, University of Michigan; Rosemary and Peter Grant, University of Princeton; Henrik Kaessmann, University of Lausanne, Switzerland; Kenneth Y. Kaneshiro, University of Hawaii; Svante Paabo, Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany; Edward C. Theriot, University of Texas; and Charles Wood, UNL.
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