This is a nice enough story but is also a chance for The Tracker to be grumpy. Not that it matters deeply but the lede in this story by the Herald’s Phil Long reflects some common, muddled thinking about so-called living fossils, evolution, and ancestry. The event is a webcast of loggerhead turtles laying eggs at a wildlife refuge. This story presumably reflects a general assignment reporter at work, doing a cheerful and generally conscientious job. But it also is an example why newspapers need specialty beats including science reporting. So much for the rant. The lede is “Tonight, ancestors of some of the planet’s oldest and most beloved creatures will come face-to-face with some of the world’s newest technology.” That bit of illogic may be inspired from one of the quotes that “sea turtles are basically living dinosaurs” whose fossils go back 150 million years. True, sort of, but…..
Other Turtle News: Orange County Register’s Pat Brennan visits a federal biologist as she rounds up non-native turtles (mainly discarded pets like the red-eared slider at the right) that make life rough for native turtles.
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