NANFA-- North American exports

Frauley/Elson (fraulels_at_minet.ca)
Wed, 29 Dec 1999 08:42:53 -0500

Hi,
I was just looking at the pike site in England, and was struck by the
evolution of our understanding of pike evolution. The time-honoured view
followed a familiar line of bias - pike are in both Europe and North
America, so therefore they evolved in Europe. Oops, the fossil evidence
says otherwise...
I know this continent has received a lot of visitors, but I can't help
but wonder if the frontier mentality has biased a lot of the info I as a
non-scientist get to see. The world view of colonizing Europeans seems
to have found a few 'colonizing' animals that may have had their origins
here. I think it's part of the disrespect for the 'new world' and all
its inhabitants, human or otherwise, that allowed us to steamroll across
the place. It seems that the idea nothing came from here was a
convenient popular myth we still see the results of. We read pop science
pieces about our fauna slaughtering the marsupials of South America, but
not a whole lot about actual evolution on our continent.
Has anyone done a historical study of scientific attitudes in this
domain, with regards to North America? I'm a sucker for the growing
accessible science book industry, so could someone feed me a title or
two?
Gary

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