Wednesday, February 27, 2008

A trompe d'oeil from the ocean shore


The Atlantic Ocean is truly one of the world's most diverse shoreline ecosystems. The most recent walk on Stuart Beach here is Florida revealed a unique coral/seashell conglomerate formation embedded in the sand at the ebb and flow of the waves. The formation is pink and has the approximate shape of a uterus, with a smooth kidney-shaped 'fetus' in the center as if attached to a slender length of white shell-rim, surrounded by the coarse-textured pressurized coral/seashell.

It's to wonder -- in the evolutionary scale of life-science events, did the coral/seashell come first, broken off the common shoreline shelf of water flowing over and back from the sand, as pieces organically arranged to become the segments of more complex animal life?

The local Stuart News has presented a series of articles about the teaching of evolution in Florida schools, the most recent asserting that evolution will be taught but only as a theory. The most recent issues have also offered a rehash of the Natalee Holloway disappearance from the island of Aruba in the Caribbean Sea near South America.

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