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The results show that the majority of adults surveyed have heard of Charles Darwin and know at least a little about his theory of evolution with the highest levels in Great Britain (71%), the USA (71%), Mexico (68%), Argentina (65%), China (54%) and Russia (53%) whilst 62 percent of adults surveyed in Egypt and 73 percent in South Africa said they had never heard of Charles Darwin or his theory of evolution. Overall, the majority (70%) of adults surveyed across the 10 countries have at least heard of the British naturalist.

In all countries surveyed more people showed some agreement than disagreement that “it is possible to believe in a God and still hold the view that life on Earth, including human life, evolved over time as a result of natural selection”.

The results also show that USA, in South Africa and in India are the most likely to believe that life on Earth, including human life, was created by a God and has always existed in its current form (all at 43%).

But most people in the world take a scientific view, with the majority of adults in China (67%), Mexico (42%), Argentina (37%), Great Britain (38%), Spain (38%) and Russia (32%) believing that life on Earth, including human life, evolved over time as a result of natural selection, in which no God played a part.

What's so cool about it?

Age. It's 47 million years old. That's interestingly old…it puts us deep into the primate family tree.

Preservation. This is an awesome fossil: it's almost perfectly complete, with all the bones in place, preserved in its death posture. There is a halo of darkly stained material around it; this is a remnant of the flesh and fur that rotted in place, and allows us to see a rough outline of the body and make estimates of muscle size. Furthermore, the guts and stomach contents are preserved. Ida's last meal was fruit and leaves, in case you wanted to know.

Life stage. Ida is a young juvenile, estimate to be right on the transition from requiring parental care to independent living. That means she has a mix of baby teeth and adult teeth — she's a two-fer, giving us information about both.

Phylogeny. A cladistic analysis of the fossil revealed another interesting point. There are two broad groups of primates: the strepsirrhines, which includes the lemurs and lorises, and the haplorhines, which includes monkeys and apes…and us, of course. Ida's anatomy places her in the haplorhines with us, but at the same time she's primitive. This is an animal caught shortly after a major branch point in primate evolutionary history.

The hype is bad news, not because Ida is unimportant, but because it detracts from the larger body of the fossil record — I doubt that the media will be able to muster as much excitement from whatever new fossil gets published in Nature or Science next week, no matter how significant it may be.

Go ahead and be excited by this find, I know I am. Just remember to be excited tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, because this is perfectly normal science, and it will go on.

Creationists question Darwin's theory of evolution. How sound is the theory of creationism? My King James version of the Bible presents at least two versions of the creation story. One, a straightforward tale of God's creation of the heavens and the earth and all creatures therein including man, male and female.

Then there is the story of Adam and Eve. The genealogy of Adam follows with a story of creation not very different from the first version. The genealogy begins with Adam's son Seth. There is no reference to either Cain or Abel.

Adam and succeeding generations of men lived at least beyond 700 years. Then comes Noah and the flood. All but Noah and his family died in the flood. The flood dried up in the 601st year (Gen. 8:13).

Adam, it says in the Bible, lived to be 930 years old. But Adam would have died in the flood at the age of 600 or so along with most of the men listed in his genealogy.

I wonder how creationists will handle these facts?

Darwin's theory seems by contrast to be quite sound.

Explaining differences in teachers' emphasis: Why do some teachers spend so much more time on evolution than others? Our data weigh heavily against one possible explanation: differences in state standards. We find that nearly 90% of cross-teacher variation is within states (Eta-square from a one-way analysis of variance by state is 0.11) as opposed to between states. As an upper limit, then, state standards cannot account for more than 11% of the variance [21].

However, our data lend support to two potential explanations: teachers' personal beliefs about evolution and the number of college-level science classes.

Teacher qualifications: The No Child Left Behind Act requires that all teachers of core subjects be “highly qualified.” Definitions of “highly qualified” vary by state, but most include demonstrated competence in the teacher's teaching assignment. Our data suggest that high school teachers who completed the largest number of college-level credits in biology and life science classes and whose coursework included at least one class in evolutionary biology devote substantially more class time to evolution than teachers with fewer credit hours (Table S6). The best prepared teachers devote 60% more time to evolution than the least prepared.

"If Chairman McLeroy is successful in adding his amendments, it will be a huge embarrassment to Texas, a setback for science education and a terrible precedent for the state boards overriding academic experts in order to further their personal religious or political agendas. The victims will be the schoolchildren of Texas, who represent the future of our state."

More than 600 Texas science faculty members have signed a petition supporting the group'seffort.

One by one, he said, his questions were answered by pastors and in Bible studies. The conversion took four months. Over the next year, he began taking seminars on creationism and biblical principles. He is now a young earth creationist, meaning that he believes God created Earth between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

The tenet in Christianity that says people were created in the image of God became one of the principles that McLeroy held most dear, he said.

"When I became a Christian, it was whole-hearted," he said. "I was totally convinced the biblical principles were right, and I was totally convinced that it could be accurate scientifically."

Sid Hall, pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Austin, which recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of naturalist Charles Darwin's birth with an "evolution Sunday" event, said he finds this kind of mixing of science and religion disturbing. Hall said that it is disingenuous to attack the fossil record and ignore carbon dating and dangerous to adhere to only the most literal interpretations of the Bible.

"I would never want to discount those works, but to take (the passage that humans were made in the image of God) to mean something about how the universe is created is a stretch to me," Hall said. "That's code to me for 'I'm going to take my particular myth of creationism and make it part of the science curriculum.' That's scary to me."

While recovering from prostate cancer last year, McLeroy said, he studied what Miller and others have written on the topic. His research led him to what he believes are scientific weaknesses that he wants to see included in the state's curriculum standards.

"If you want children to become good scientists, to become excited about that, you've got to be honest with them. And to be honest with them, you've got to show them the data," he said.

McLeroy, who was elected with about 59 percent of the vote in 2006, said he has numerous letters from constituents encouraging his efforts.

In January, the board voted 8-7 to reject a requirement that students be taught the weaknesses of evolution. However, McLeroy was able to get some amendments passed.

"He waited until all 14 members spoke and then handed the gavel off ... and said, 'Look, I've got an opinion.' He was really careful to try and shepherd the process without bias, and I think that's a real strength," said Bradley, who voted with McLeroy.

McLeroy's amendments included adding a requirement that students analyze and evaluate the insufficiencies of the theory of common ancestry to explain gaps in the fossil record.

He has succeeded in rewriting the state's definition of science as it pertains to teaching to require "testable explanations" of nature. McLeroy said the change should allow the questioning of all scientific explanations and opens the door to the possibility that the universe was created by God. But he wants more.

McLeroy says he intends to pitch another idea that he says should be taught in public schools: the insufficiency of natural selection to explain the complexity of cells.

Hillis said the language that McLeroy has proposed to add to the standards does not make sense.

"The language of science needs to be precise; McLeroy's amendments are not even intelligible. I wonder if perhaps he wants the standards to be confusing so that he can open the door to attacking mainstream biology textbooks and arguing for the addition of creationist and other religious literature into the science classroom," Hillis said.

Miller said, "The attitude (that evolution has weaknesses) does Texas a disservice on two levels. The first thing is it implies a false sense of uncertainty on evolution ... and the reality is exactly the opposite. Evolution is very solid and increasingly accepted.

"The second point is even more dangerous," Miller said. "It implies a false sense of certainty about everything else in biology. ... I think it presents a really distorted view of the biological sciences to tell students that 'we're pretty sure of everything else in biology, but evolutionary theory, kids, is a little shaky.' "