Microbes and Dinosaurs

Science writer Carl Zimmer recently gave a lecture at the American Society of Microbiology meeting in which he discussed his perspective on telling the stories of science. He opens his discussion by talking about, of all things, Anchiornis and the recent discoveries about feather color in dinosaurs. Why? Because they're such a great gateway drug into other scientific topics.

MWV39 - Carl Zimmer: Newspapers, Blogs, and Other Vectors: Infecting Minds with Science in the Age of New Media from microbeworld on Vimeo.

The Carls, Buell and Zimmer

Image by Carl Buell, via flickr

Revered natural history artist Carl Buell doesn't do a lot of dinosaur art, but his flickr photostream is definitely worth a look. Some of the pieces are to be featured in The Tangled Bank, a new textbook on evolution by the fine science writer Carl Zimmer. It looks beautiful. Zimmer recently showed off some photos of the printed book on his Discover blog, The Loom. It includes a spread featuring a chart of theropod-bird evolution and a Buell painting of Archaeopteryx.

Zimmer also appeared on the season premiere of RadioLab, talking about one of his favorite subjects, parasites. And he discusses The Tangled Bank on the New York Academy of Sciences' podcast, Science and the City.