Darwin Day

Join us as the Science Under The Stars team helps celebrate Darwin Day at the Texas Memorial Museum. Our very own past speaker Emily Jane McTavish will be giving her excellent talk about the evolution of Texas Longhorns at 3:00pm!

Sunday, February 11, 2012 1-4:45pm

Texas Memorial Museum

2400 Trinity St.

Austin, Texas 78705

© John A. Maisano

Here’s more information from the Texas Memorial Museum’s website:

Join TNSC on Sunday, February 12, 2012 from 1 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. for Darwin Day—a free, family-friendly event celebrating the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth.

Travel on your own voyage of discovery as you explore specimens from the TNSC collections similar to those that Darwin saw during his journey while aboard the HMS Beagle, investigate how Darwin’s observations led him to develop fundamental theories of evolution, and learn more about Darwin’s influence on modern day science.

FREE activities for the whole-family include:

Ongoing: Arts and crafts, exploration of TNSC specimens at booths hosted by University of Texas at Austin scientists, and digging in the Fossil Dig Pit

Talks by University of Texas at Austin Scientists:

1:30 p.m.—Sassy taste or sexy traits: Stories about co-evolution of female preference and male traits: presented by Silu Wang, Graduate Student, School of Integrative Biology

3:00 p.m.—Longhorn evolution: presented by Emily Jane McTavish, Graduate Student, School of Integrative Biology

In 1831 Charles Darwin set off on a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean on the HMS Beagle. His scientific observations of the amazing diversity of animals he saw in South America were the foundation of his theory of evolution by natural selection. I use the principles of evolution to study Texas Longhorn cattle, another organism that made that long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean—over 300 years before Darwin.