Saturday, January 26, 2008

Darwin2009: The Beagle Project

I just learned about the Beagle Project from John Hawkes' blog.
As the page for the Beagle Project explains:
"2009 is one of the most significant anniversary years in science: it marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin (12 February 1809), and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection."

and then,

"
Our contribution to this [celebration of this great anniversary] will be to build a sailing replica of HMS Beagle, the ship on which Darwin circumnavigated the globe between 1831 and 1836. It was during the shore expeditions he made from the Beagle that he collected the specimens which would later inspire the theory of Natural Selection and the Origin of Species.

The replica HMS Beagle will be launched in 2009 and will spend the year opening its decks to the public, teachers and scientists and supporting the Darwin200 celebrations."

So they are going to build a replica Beagle and then sail over the same ground that Darwin covered when he participated on this epic voyage. They are going to bring modern equipment and do a number of inspired projects along the way.

What a phenomenal sounding adventure. All I can say is 'take me take me!!'. Don't you think they need an archaeologist? Especially one that is interested in things like island biogeography, primate life history variation, foraging behavior, conservation biology, scaling/metabolic theory, natural history in general, and oh of course -human macroecology- and who is tons of fun to work with? Sign me up. Yeah, there's no way this is a complete voyage without a human macroecologist. Somebody please convince them for me.


Best,
Oskar

1 comment:

Shawn "Fred" Whiteman said...

You should totally go, if you didn't have that, you know, dissertation to do.

I keep forgetting to tell you, I've copied your idea and made a paleoecology blog for our topics in paleoecology class. It's paleoecology.blogspot.com. Nothing too exciting yet, but it would be hard to beat this blog.

 
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