''The Panda's Thumb'' is a

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

on issues of

creationism Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 't ...

and

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

from a mainstream scientific perspective. In 2006, ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

'' listed it as one of the top five science blogs, and

Mark Pallen Mark J. Pallen is a research leader at the Quadram Institute and Professor of Microbial Genomics at the University of East Anglia. In recent years, he has been at the forefront of efforts to apply next-generation sequencing to problems in microb ...

has called it "the definitive blog on the evolution versus creationism debate". It is written by multiple contributors, including

Wesley R. Elsberry Wesley Royce Elsberry (born January 23, 1960) is a data scientist with an interdisciplinary background in marine biology, zoology, computer science, and wildlife and fisheries sciences. He also became notably involved in the defense of evolutio ...

Joe Felsenstein Joseph "Joe" Felsenstein (born May 9, 1942) is a Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Genome Sciences and Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He is best known for his work on phylogenetic inference, and is the author of ''Inferr ...

Paul R. Gross Paul R. Gross is a biologist and author, perhaps best known to the general public for ''Higher Superstition'' (1994), written with Norman Levitt. Gross is the University Professor of Life Sciences (Emeritus) at the University of Virginia; he previo ...

Nick Matzke Nicholas J. Matzke is the former Public Information Project Director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) and served an instrumental role in NCSE's preparation for the 2005 ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'' trial. One of h ...

, and

Mark Perakh Mark Perakh (russian: Марк Пэрах; ''perach'' (פֶּ֫רַח) is the Hebrew word for "flower"; born ''Mark Yakovlevich Popereka'' in 1924, Kiev, Ukraine, died 7 May 2013 in Escondido, California), was a professor emeritus of Mathematics ...

, many of whom used to have complementary blogs at

ScienceBlogs ScienceBlogs is an invitation-only blog network and virtual community that operated initially for almost 12 years, from 2006 to 2017. It was created by Seed Media Group to enhance public understanding of science. Each blog had its own theme, spec ...

before it went defunct. The blog takes its name from The Panda's Thumb, the pub of the virtual University of Ediacara, which is named after the book of the same name by

Stephen Jay Gould Stephen Jay Gould (; September 10, 1941 – May 20, 2002) was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was one of the most influential and widely read authors of popular science of his generation. Gould sp ...

, which in turn takes its title from the essay "The Panda's Peculiar Thumb",Gould, S. J. (1978)
"The panda's peculiar thumb."
''Natural History'' 87 (Nov.): 20–30. which discusses the Panda's

sesamoid bone In anatomy, a sesamoid bone () is a bone embedded within a tendon or a muscle. Its name is derived from the Arabic word for ' sesame seed', indicating the small size of most sesamoids. Often, these bones form in response to strain, or can be pres ...

, an example of

convergent evolution Convergent evolution is the independent evolution of similar features in species of different periods or epochs in time. Convergent evolution creates analogous structures that have similar form or function but were not present in the last com ...

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Panda's Thumb Science blogs Evolutionary biology literature Criticism of creationism

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