The display of horse evolution at the AMNH as created by W.D. Matthew. Price reproduced this illustration without permission in his creationist textbook The New Geology.

The 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial” put scientists on the defensive. It did not matter that the defendant in the famous case, John Scopes, probably never taught evolution in a Tennessee school (he was only a substitute teacher and football coach who agreed to take the fall so that the ACLU could test a law that barred evolution from schools); the issue that everyone was concerned about was the conflict between science and religion. Evolution was a threat to the fervent beliefs of fundamentalist Christians, and in the wake of Scopes’ conviction