In this year of not only the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, but the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, we can expect the major celebratory events to be countered by the usual mediaevally-minded creationist suspects. The journal Nature has published a useful document with the aim of highlighting an publicising why (the vast majoroty of) scientists regard evolution by natural selection as a fact - "15 Evolutionary Gems"- the contents are as follows:
Gems from the fossil record
1 Land-living ancestors of whales
2 From water to land
3 The origin of feathers
4 The evolutionary history of teeth
5 The origin of the vertebrate skeleton
Gems from habitats
6 Natural selection in speciation
7 Natural selection in lizards
8 A case of co-evolution
9 Differential dispersal in wild birds
10 Selective survival in wild guppies
11 Evolutionary history matters
Gems from molecular processes
12 Darwin's Galapagos finches
13 Microevolution meets macroevolution
14 Toxin resistance in snakes and clams
15 Variation versus stability
In each case, citations to papers and articles published in Nature are provided, together with links to authors' websites and one or two other links. The document seems fairly comprehensive, if a little technical for a general audience. It will be interesting to see who else takes up the gauntlet.