[Right Wing Professor]

Thanks for the opportunity to correct some creationist misstatements in a rather prominent place. I've no doubt there are a score of evolutionary biologists in the UK who will be writing the same thing, but maybe they'll publish mine out of novelty.

Sent to the TImes Online

Lincoln, Nebraska, May 26, 2005.

Sir:

Professor Andy McIntosh, in yesterday's letters, appoints himself arbiter what 'any serious thinker' knows. If he wishes to include himself among that august tribe, he should get his facts straight. While trilobites did indeed first appear in the fossil record at the base of the Cambrian, the first trilobites had simple, holochroal eyes. The complex, double-lensed schizochroal eyes which he claims 'have no precursor in the rocks' are in fact derived from these simpler eyes, and appeared much later, in the Ordovician. A convincing account of their evolution has been given by Levi -Setti (2002).

Yours Faithfully
Gerard S. Harbison, Professor of Chemistry
University of Nebraska at Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68588-0304
USA.

[anguish]

Gerard S. Harbison, Professor of Chemistry

What? Surely you mean "Gerard S. Harbison , a.k.a. Beloved and all-knowing leader." ;oP (went to see what your research was about and got a free laugh)