The natural history museums in Chicago and New York have chosen different ways to build up their dinosaur exhibits.
The museum in New York spent $30 million to renovate its exhibits, which now preach the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
The Chicago museum, on the other hand, spent its money on the Midwest’s most beloved dinosaur skeleton. This purchase did not tie Chicago to any particular theory.
Now researchers at the University of North Carolina have found an important difference between dinosaur embryos and bird embryos: Dinosaur embryos have vestigial thumbs; bird embryos do not (“Dinosaurs not ancestors of birds, new study says,” Oct. 24).
There is a wonderful irony in this situation. Stephen Jay Gould is the chief ideologist of the New York museum, and he called his most obnoxious book “The Panda’s Thumb.” Now his museum is going to lose prestige because of the dinosaur’s thumb.
