Geoscience Reports 30:5 (Winter 2000).
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EDITOR'S ANGLE

    Most of the public media and scientific community actively promote the theory that birds descended from dinosaurs. Though many scientists do not hold this view, some insist that birds are living dinosaurs. These ideas are primarily promoted among children — who lack the expertise, information or conceptual ability to analyze the arguments presented by individuals in positions of authority. They also lack the experience that is needed to challenge the popular paradigms.
    This situation places an enormous burden on parents and teachers to keep themselves informed and to present a balanced view so that young people can learn to think and make choices regarding personal beliefs despite media and societal pressures to conform to the current views held by some scientists. Our students need to understand that change does occur among animals in our world but interpretations of those changes may hinge on selective data, preconceived ideas (our own, as well as those of others), popular theories, and numerous other biases.
    Topics such as "Solnhofen Limestone: Home of Archaeopteryx" inform our young people regarding the data. They help them recognize the kind of data that should be examined and studied with respect to other claims of evolutionary links. Table 1 has been enlarged so that it can be duplicated and distributed without a lot of time-consuming trimming of the page and enlargement. We hope that you will find this issue of Geoscience Reports helpful in your classroom teaching.