Bio. 1407 Readings and Resources

File Thoughts and Observations About Mastering Bio. 1407 File Bloom's Taxonomy for Bio. 1407 Lecture Exams File Bio. 1407 Link to Evolution 101 File The Day The Dinosaurs Died Here is an article which appeared in the "New Yorker" magazine, concerning what may turn out to be the most important fossil find in the past 100 years. A doctoral student in geology appears to have found a site laid down the very day that an asteroid six miles in diameter impacted the Earth, killing vast numbers of plants and animals, and extinguishing dinosaur life on this planet. The article provides a fascinating description of the events on that terrible day and also a detailed look at the timeline leading to the discovery and the presentation of this once in a lifetime fossil find. I strongly recommend it to you - enjoy!! This work of paleontology was also cited in the "Houston Chronicle" on Wed. Apr. 3, 2019, Page A2. The PBS show "NOVA" also ran an hour long episode entitled "The Day The Dinosaurs Died" (PBS store, Item #: NV61708) documenting how a team of scientists actually drilled down to the impact crater at Chicxulub, Mexico to bring up debris cores from that cataclysmic impact ~66 million years ago. File A Seismically Induced Onshore Surge Deposit at the KPg Boundary For those hardy people who want to read the original of the above mentioned research article by DePalma et al, here it is. By all means, notice the level of scientific work and presentation in this landmark paper, published in the prestigious "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" journal. File Bio. 1407 Human Tails! Here is a medical journal article that speaks for itself! File A Pictorial Comparison of Human and Ape Chromosomes Link A brand new species by sympatric speciation! A brand new species by sympatric speciation has been reported at the beginning of 2018! The New York Times article I've posted explains the history and importance of this event in non-scientific language, but I recommend that you take a look at the actual research paper published in Nature Ecology and Evolution at the link shown here------- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0467-9------ This is a magnificent example of speciation by sympatric means, and is the best example I know of demonstrating the almost instantaneous appearance of a new species by a whole genome nondisjunction event. I would hesitate to characterize this event as a mutation, as you see in The Times article, since much work still needs to be done concerning the actual DNA sequences involved. It most certainly appears to be a stunning example of gene duplication in an animal species, and seems to have happened recently in a completely natural environment. Please also look at the "Evolution of Wheat" paper I've posted in this section for another example of speciation by ploidy. This event was of incalculable importance to humans in the Fertile Crescent!----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nature Ecology and Evolution is an offshoot of the journal Nature, one of the most important and prestigious scientific journals in the world. Papers published in Nature have been subjected to peer review, and demonstrate a high degree of scientific rigor and confidence. In 1953, Nature published James Watson's and Francis Crick's landmark paper which first outlined the structure of DNA, for which they both received the Nobel Prize in 1962.--------------------------------------------------------------- File The Evolution of Wheat - another example of sympatric speciation Companion paper to the link above. File Heterochrony - Chimp Infant and Chimp Adult File Bio. 1407 Insect Mouthparts - Grasshopper File Bio. 1407 Insect Mouthparts - Mayfly larva Image Bio. 1407 - Vertebrate mouthparts - jawless lamprey File Human embryonic pharyngeal pouches File Letters of Recommendation Policies and Instructions Link Actionbioscience - Evolution Here is a website with a wide variety of readings concerning evolution and the history of life on Earth. It is a presentation of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, a nonprofit scientific association dedicated to biological research and education. It was founded by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, and is a premier source of biology information. You should consider these readings as extremely worthwhile in order to give you some depth and background in the topics we touch on in class. Also, I emphatically recommend that you spend some time looking the AIBS website over, especially if you have plans for a career in biology. You can link to it through the AIBS logo at the top of this Readings page. My sincere gratitude to Mrs. Gwendolyn Richards, an Idaho educator, and her summer 2011 high school science students, for making me aware of this superb website. Bravo and well done, Eagles!! Link Evolution of Humans This is part of a website devoted to the evolution of the primates, this page focusing specifically on humans. Some basic evidence for human evolution is given in a series of links to written and video resources, and if you go to the main menu, primate evolution in general is covered. The site offers additional information - I specifically recommend you reading the page concerning Primate Color Vision. It is fascinating! Thanks again to Mrs. Richards and her summer 2011 super science students for letting me know about this website. Link Stephen Jay Gould - Archived This website is devoted to the life and writings of the late Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard biology professor and one of the great science writers for the general public in the 20th Century. Gould was, in my opinion, the greatest writer on evolutionary topics that has ever lived. Focus on the SJG Library link, and on his quotations. Read Gould and get the measure of how a scientist's mind works. I don't agree with everything he says, but I've never read anything by him that I haven't liked and respected. Link Boxcar - Selection at work! Evolve a car! Watch it happen! I watch this for hours while I'm working on my computer. The best performing cars get to reproduce themselves in the next generation, and the cars gain functionality - or not! Sometimes the best cars will "die" anyway, and that chance is also part of evolution. Sometimes I let the program run overnight and look at it in the morning to see what has evolved over many generations. Truly fascinating to see what this program comes up with! You can set the mutation rate of the cars higher or lower, play around with the number of wheels, and give the cars different challenging terrains to adapt to. Expect a "train wreck" of failures for the first 10 to 20 generations, but you will ultimately see the best working cars survive, survivors reproduce over time, and you will see the population makeup of the cars change to fit the terrain. Different terrain environments will select for different optimally shaped cars - just like natural selection does over time with living organisms! Watch it happen!! Link The Szostak Lab This is a link the the laboratory of Dr. Jack Szostak, a world famous, Nobel Prize winning professor investigating the biochemical origin(s) of life on Earth. he is currently working on explaining how early genetic material, such as RNA, came to be. Please explore his website - meet the people, get a feel for the papers he has published, watch the movies he has posted, link to his posted resources. File "Darwin Devolves" book review Michael Behe's new book "Darwin Devolves" is his latest defense of "intelligent design". Here, two of his colleagues from the Biology Department at Lehigh University review his book from the point of modern natural selection. This is a good defense of evolution, and please note the personal compliment the authors pay Dr. Behe at the end of the review. This is how civil discourse should proceed!