Extinction of Some Species

"Extinction of some species." Dead bodies buried in sediment from Noah's flood represent entire flocks, herds and populations of animals. If they were the only living members of their species, that's why they're extinct.

Dinosaur Classification

Whether or not a Biblical word translated as a kind of serpent refers to something which may have been a dinosaur is context dependent. Sometimes a snake is just a snake. Sometimes a serpent is a Sauropod.

Carl Linnaeus

The classification of plants animals and minerals is called taxonomy or systematics. Our scientific background is plant systematics. The modern age of systematics is based on comparing DNA sequences.

A Phylogenetic Tree of Life

Back in the early days of using DNA in systematics, when PCR machines (polymerase chain reaction) were cool new toys, the data was fragmentary. We were a grad student in one of the molecular labs sequencing plant DNA.

What’s a Tarheel?

In the fall of 1990 we began the graduate program in Plant Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. On our first day we were shown around Coker Hall by a senior graduate student