Canada's alternative alternative

Just a snippet from yesterday's Globe & Mail article on the new Canadian creation museum, in Big Valley, Alberta. It cost only a fraction of the U.S. version's $27 million, but interestingly while its U.S. counterpart is known as the "creation museum", the Canadian version bills itself as the "creation science museum". Read the rest here:

The museum sits about 60 kilometres north of Drumheller's Royal Tyrrell Museum, which houses one of the world's largest collections of dinosaur bones, and Mr. Nibourg wants his 900-square-foot facility to serve as an "alternative view" of Earth history.

It is filled with everything from a "fossilized teddy bear" meant to show how quickly an object can appear fossilized, to a scroll that claims England's Henry VI can be traced back to Adam and Eve, to fossils offered as proof of the Biblical flood.

If you happen to find yourself in southern Alberta this summer, do yourself a favor and head to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, a member of the Alliance of Natural History Museums of Canada. The Royal Tyrrell has a wealth of programs for children and families, including nine different summer programs -- make a fossil cast, hike the Badlands, excavate at a simulated dig site, prospect for fossils, and more -- and a science camp. Also, during the school year, "University, college and school students [including homeschoolers] with accompanying teachers and chaperones are admitted free when they are visiting as part of a school group". And did I mention that the nifty gift shop is online? Where you can find the Royal Tyrrell's own Resource-a-saurus Rex, a teacher's guide to palaeontology for use with grades K through 12.

I typed this all by myself with my opposable thumbs

I shouldn't even be here posting, because we're getting ready for the big 4H Beef Club weekend -- achievement day, interclub show, and sale. (No, Laura doesn't have to sell her heifer calf; only the steers get sold, heading straight to their doom and little wrapped packages. One reason an older friend of hers and longtime 4H member suggested a heifer over a steer.)

I've been reading and hearing again a fair amount this past week about the new creation museum in the U.S., since opening day is slated for Monday.

So it was a tonic to read Red Molly's thoughts on the subject, especially in conjunction with homeschooling (HT Alasandra, and also for the reminder about the John Wayne Centennial today, for which my kids are gleeful).

Even more interesting to learn that Red Molly's post is part of tomorrow's, erm, creation museum carnival to be hosted by one of my favorite science bloggers, PZ Myers at Pharyngula, which, by the way, has some of the best online prehistory/evolution reading lists in a variety of categories -- "for the kids", "for the grown-up layman", "for the more advanced/specialized reader", etc. (scroll through the comments for more titles).

Whether or not Monday is a holiday where you are, go visit a natural history museum (scroll all the way down for related links). Of special note,

Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Drumheller, Alberta (which offers home school discounts)

Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario

Canadian Museum of Nature, Ottawa, Ontario

American Museum of Natural History, New York City

Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; the travelling Charles Darwin exhibit opens here on June 15, 2007 (through January 1, 2008) and has its own website

Museum of Science, Boston

Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center, Woodland Park, Colorado

Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology, Abiquiu, New Mexico

Wyoming Dinosaur Center, Thermopolis, Wyoming

National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, Kenya

the grandaddy of them all, the Natural History Museum, in London, England

and the great-grandaddy -- the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin aka the Naturkundemuseum aka the Humboldt Museum of Natural History in Berlin, with collections -- more than 20 million zoology specimens, more than 3 million palaeontology specimens, and more than one million mineralogy ones -- that date back to the establishment of the Prussian Academy, in 1700, and the Bergakademie (Mining Academy) in 1770. Celebrated for its Brachiosaurus brancai, the world's biggest mounted dinosaur skeleton. Thanks to the great grandaddy OC for the reminder.

Additional links:

The Charles Darwin Has a Posse sticker page. Because you can never underestimate the power of a well-placed sticker or bookmark. As I noted in my 2005 Posse post, "As Darwin himself said, and as you can be reminded daily from a bookmark, 'Doing what little one can to increase the general stock of knowledge is as respectable an object of life as one can, in any likelihood, pursue'."

Understanding Evolution website, created by the University of California Museum of Paleontology; lots of resources for educators and children

Darwin Day Celebration website, with links, events, and other items leading to a celebration of the great man's bicentennial on February 12, 2009.

The Darwin exhibit is no longer at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC -- it's opening at the Field Museum in Chicago (see above) on June 15 -- but the website remains, with a good list of resources, some for kids.

The PBS Evolution series also has a nifty website, with some projects and links for "Teachers and Students"

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Verlyn Klinkengborg's New York Times column, August 2005, Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution

Darwin Correspondence Project, based at Cambridge University; according to the project's website, "The main feature of the site is an online database with the complete, searchable, texts of around 5,000 letters written by and to Charles Darwin up to the year 1865. This includes all the surviving letters from the Beagle voyage - online for the first time - and all the letters from the years around the publication of Origin of species in 1859."

Coturnix's book list for adults

Becoming Human website

Project Beagle website and the Beagle blog

Evolved Homeschooling blog -- "A collection of evolution and science resources for the secular homeschooler".

And finally, you can join the Friends of Charles Darwin, gratis.