The Origin of Birds - Dr. Julia Clarke

Paleontologist Dr. Julia Clarke shares the evidence that connects modern-day birds with dinosaurs in this 19 minute exploration: The Origin of Birds. Also: Archaeopteryx, one of the most important fossils ever discovered.

The video belongs to HHMI BioInteractive‘s Great Transitions in Evolution, a series about the “fossils of animals with features that are intermediate between those of ancestral and modern groups–or transitional fossils–provide evidence for the evolutionary origin of key anatomical structures.” More about the video:

The discovery of Archaeopteryx in a quarry in Germany in the early 1860s provided the first clue that birds descended from reptiles. But what kind of reptile? In the last 40 years, scientists have identified many shared features between birds and two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods.

The film illustrates many of the practices of science, including asking important questions, formulating and testing hypotheses, analyzing and interpreting evidence, and revising explanations as new evidence becomes available.

HHMI BioInteractive also has an abbreviated film guide for educators [pdf], a transcript, and videos available for download.

Marie Tharp: Uncovering the Secrets of the Ocean Floor

In the early 20th century, Alfred Wegener proposed a revolutionary idea: that the Earth’s continents were once joined together, and had gradually moved apart. The idea contradicted almost everything scientists thought at the time, and it took the detailed work of a brilliant cartographer to prove him right. 

Conventional ideas held that the ocean floors were flat, featureless planes. As expeditions started to go around the world collecting ocean depth measurements, Marie Tharp – not allowed to join the expeditions herself – processed the data and began to craft detailed, revealing maps of the hidden ocean depths.

She discovered that the ocean floor was in fact a complex assortment of peaks and troughs. In particular, her profiles revealed stark rift valleys, which supported Wegener’s controversial ideas. Even then, it took a long time to convince the scientific community that her findings were correct. Eventually, however, she was proved right, and Marie Tharp took her rightful place as one of history’s finest cartographers.

From The Royal Institution, narrated by physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski, a revealing animation about American geologist and oceanographic cartographer Marie Tharp: Uncovering the Secrets of the Ocean Floor.