The year 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of naturalist Charles Darwin and the 150th publication anniversary of The Origin of Species, the book in which Darwin set forth the theory of evolution.

During the 2008-09 academic year, Bates College and the Lewiston Public Library are commemorating these anniversaries with "Darwin at 200," a series of events illustrating the importance of Darwin's theory to our understanding of life on Earth and to human culture.

The series, which began earlier this month with a reading-discussion series at the library, presents two lectures in October by Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.

Shubin comes to Bates at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 7, at Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave., for a talk called "Finding Your Inner Fish." He will discuss anatomical similarities between fish and humans, and human ailments that derive from our fish ancestry. For more information, please call 207-786-6490.

Shubin gives a talk titled "Evolution and the Fish Within Us All" as a Great Falls Forum event at noon Wednesday, Oct. 8, at the public library, 200 Lisbon St. For more information, please call the library's reference desk at 207-513-3135.

All "Darwin at 200" events are open to the public at no cost. The Oct. 7 Shubin event is the annual Sawyer Lecture at Bates and is sponsored by the William Sawyer Memorial Biology Lecture Fund, the biology department and the College Lecture Series. For more information, please visit the Darwin series Web site.

Shubin is a leading paleontologist and a specialist in the evolutionary development of limbs. He was one of a team of researchers who discovered the Arctic fossil fish Tiktaalik roseae, which has been called the "missing link" between fish and land animals.

That discovery informs Your Inner Fish (Random House, 2008). Using fossil finds, genetic discoveries and animal anatomy, the book traces human origins and the evolution of body parts such as limbs, teeth, skulls, ears and eyes.

In the book, Shubin "explains how everything that is apparently unique about humans is built from parts that are shared with other creatures," in the words of University of Chicago staff writer Catherine Gianaro.

Shubin is the associate dean of the Division of Biological Sciences and the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Anatomy at the University of Chicago, and is the provost of that city's Field Museum of Natural History.

Next in the "Darwin at 200" series: The 2006 film Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus, written and directed by Randy Olson, will be shown at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, at the Lewiston Public Library's Callahan Hall.

In February (date, time and venue to be determined), the series presents the British Broadcasting Corporation documentary A War on Science. Also from 2006, this piece examines the 2005 court case against the Dover, Pa., school board, which attempted to inject intelligent design into the public school curriculum. The film presents commentary by proponents of both evolution and intelligent design.

Science historian Sheila Ann Dean presents the lecture "Charles Darwin: After the Origin and Before the Descent," focusing on Darwin's correspondence relating to his Descent of Man and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. A visiting scholar in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, Dean speaks at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 11, at a Bates location to be announced.

The William Sawyer Memorial Biology Lecture Fund was established at Bates by Dr. Carl E. Andrews, Bates class of 1940, to honor William H. Sawyer Jr., Bates class of 1913, who taught biology at Bates from 1916 to 1962.