Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

paleontology

Science Corner: What Remains of a Life?

A plesiosaur skeleton and a portrait of its discoverer Mary Anning, from the Natural History Museum in London (Photo by Inklaar )

This post discusses plot details of Ammonite which is based on the life of Mary Anning while admittedly also employing significant creative license. To the extent such a film can be spoiled, this post contains spoilers.

We haven’t talked about a movie in a while, and since I’ve written before about Mary Anning, it seemed appropriate to discuss the recent film Ammonite based on her life. I knew very little about the film beyond the fact that Anning was its subject, but I was expecting something akin to The Dig, a drama centered around an unlikely archaeological find. And indeed both films feature plenty of English mud. But where The Dig, well, delved into the politics of the early 20th century British archaeology world and the broader significance of the titular excavation, Ammonite is much more interested in the personal life of Anning (including several explicit sex scenes that may be disqualifying for prospective viewers).
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Science Corner: Digging into Natural History

mary anning photo
A plesiosaur skeleton and a portrait of its discoverer Mary Anning, from the Natural History Museum in London (Photo by Inklaar )

This week’s exploration of Christians’ history in the sciences brings us to Mary Anning. Anning was a 19th century fossil collector whose work would form the foundation of paleontology. She found some of the first ichthyosaur, plesiosaur and pterosaur skeletons.
Most striking to me is that she did so largely as an outsider. She had a passion for science and pursued her investigations without the kind of institutional support we associate with modern science. We may need more Mary Annings going forward as that kind of support is available to a smaller proportion of qualified scientists than in recent years.
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Science Corner: Objects in Poster May Be Further Away Than They Appear

Poster for Star Wars film <em>Rogue One</em> showing the Death Star filling the daytime sky of a planet.
The poster in question, with the enormous Death Star dominating the horizon. (© Walt Disney Films)

In the week when nerds make their annual pilgrimage to San Diego Comic-Con, I couldn’t resist this little tidbit on science fiction meets science fact. Last week, a poster was revealed for the upcoming Star Wars movie Rogue One. As you can see, the Death Star looms large over a surface-bound skirmish. While fully acknowledging that the Death Star doesn’t exist as such and so obviously computer graphics and Photoshop were involved in rendering this image for our galaxy, one might wonder if it would be physically possible to ever photograph such an image in the land of Luke and Leia. As it happens, optically speaking the poster is a plausible image–although it raises some red flags about the gravity involved in this scenario. The math and the physics aren’t particularly complicated and the conclusion isn’t terribly profound, but I like to be reminded every now and again that our human intuitions need to be sanity checked.
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