USA TODAY, July 19, 2000, Wednesday, LIFE;  Pg. 10D
HEADLINE: Origins-of-man issue continues to develop at Kansas campus
BYLINE: Mary Beth Marklein

DATELINE:  LAWRENCE, Kan.

    LAWRENCE, Kan.  Charles Darwin is a big man on campus at the
University of Kansas. The research library houses a firstedition copy of the
scientist's On the Origin of the Species, published in 1859, and a letter,
dated April 19, 1882, believed to be the scientist's last professional
correspondence. On the brick exterior of Dyche Hall, his name is etched
into an ornamental space.
     But the primary monument to Darwin is inside Dyche Hall, which houses
a naturalhistory museum built on his theory that living things share
common ancestors but change over time.
    To Tom Willis, president of the Creation Science Association for
Mid-America, however, the museum represents a graphic display of "the
evolutionary bias of many scientists." Each year, Willis and CSA member
Bob Farwell organize a "creation safari" to the museum (coming Saturday this
year), where they share their views on the displays. "There is no better
place to contrast the claims of evolution with the truth of the Bible than
in an evolutionary cathedral," a CSA brochure says.
    Love Darwin or hate him, the museum is an educational opportunity.
Here's a distillation of how evolutionists and creationists would explain
one of the museum's most prized possessions, a family of dinosaurs
excavated in Wyoming by University of Kansas paleontologists:
     * Evolution

    The 140-million-year-old fossil remains of two adults and a baby
camarasaurus, the earliest record of a family group of this type of
animal, are from the Jurassic Period. Camarasaurus was a giant, planteating
dinosaur. The geologic conditions of this discovery suggest they died in
the flooding of a stream and that their carcasses were carried downstream,
where fossil remains of other carcasses from the Jurassic Period also were
found.
     * Creation

    Earth and most of its life forms came into existence suddenly, about
6,000 years ago, and dinosaurs were created, as Genesis states, and
coexisted with man throughout history. The remains discovered in Wyoming
fit the description of the large planteating behemoth described in the
Book of Job. Though most dinosaurs are extinct, primarily because of climate
changes, there have been relatively recent reported sightings of flying
reptiles. The mere presence of dinosaur remains is not proof of evolution.

GRAPHIC: "Evolutionary bias": Tom Willis, left, and Bob Farwell visit the
parasaurolophus exhibit at the University of Kansas museum.