GEOL204 Final

Potential trigger for megafaunal extinction: Climate change

-unlikely to have been the actual killing mechanism. Nevertheless, climate change can greatly change the distribution of plants, their growing seasons, habitat ranges, and so forth -The Turnover Pulse model of evolutionary change would suggest we would see extinctions rather simultaneously around the world, since most climate shifts are global. But that is not the pattern that we see -it is critical to note that nearly all these species survived climate transitions as strong or stronger earlier in their history

Derived Homo

-very large brained hominins - Neanderthals has the largest brain size of all hominins (yes, bigger than ours) and were very powerfully built. They show many unique derived characters lacking in all modern humans, and are almost certainly not our ancestors (except for a few possible genes here and there). Neanderthals lived in Europe and the Mideast, in cold (but not glacial) conditions. Breaks in their bones match rodeo performers, suggesting that they manhandled large animals. Tool kit, Mousterian, far more sophisticated than the Acheulean, lacked art and fine tools. Very rich meat diet. Towards end, produced Chatelperronian technology: finer than Mousterian, but still lacking in obvious art except for some probably beads for necklaces.

Megafaunal extinction in Sahul

In addition to the giant wombat Diprotodon opatum, other notable marsupials which died out in the late Pleistocene were the marsupial "lion" (probably more like a jaguar ecologically) Thylacoleo carnifex and the giant kangaroos Procoptodon goliah and Simosthenurus occidentalis. But in the Sahul some giant reptiles were present as part of the megafauna: the possibly-carnivorous giant duck relative Genyornis newtoni; a giant constricting snake Wonambi naracoortensis (not a boa or python, but last survivor of a Cretaceous lineage of big snakes); the giant club-tailed horned turtle Meiolania platyceps; and enormous Varanus priscus (once called "Megalania"), a huge predatory lizard closely related to the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis).

5 components of evolution

1. descent with modification 2. modifications occur relatively slowly on average 3. Pops. may diverge into two or more distinct lineages 4. shape of the history of lineages can be seen as a Tree of Life (Coral of Life) 5. Much evolutionary change is due to natural selection, which is the sole process for producing adaptations

Koch's Creations

1st complete mastodon (Mammut) fossil found in NY--> purchased by Albert Koch, as well as another--> added extra vertabrae from other specimens with wood spacers to double its length (mounted tusks in wrong direction) ("Missourium" largest of all terrestrial animals) -declared a forgery and popularity increased -sold to British Museum "Hydrachos" good partial skeleton of Basilosaurus and created the sea serpent (Ruler of the Sea - 114 ft long) --> shown in Broadway and Europe -sold to Prussian King -Created a 2nd smaller Hydrachos and sold to museum in Chicago Motive: $

Forest Primeval (Paleozoic)

1st forests and complex freshwater communities; development of seeds, wings, and shelled eggs

Ordovician-Silurian Mass Extinction (Paleozoic)

1st major mass extinction with major glacial events -85% of species are lost (although the total number is less than later ones: there were fewer total species known for the Ordovician than for later in the Phanerozoic) -devastation within brachiopods, bryozoans, graptolites, trilobites, and conodonts, but more major clades were lost -coincides with a major period of glaciation ---might have been responsible for the extinction by perhaps reducing the available habitat area in the shallow marine realm (because of a major sea-level drop), and/or a major period of anoxia from global eutrophication, due to the influx of considerable amount of nutrients from material scraped off the continents from glaciers

Devonian-Carboniferous Mass Extinction (Paleozoic)

2nd major mass extinction saw loss of complex reef habitats, primitive fish caused by eutrophication and anoxia -used to be thought of as two extinctions, now just one -characterized by a collapse of major reef community (the tabulate-stromatoporoid reef community) -losses of primitive grades and clades of fish ("ostracoderms", "placoderms", and acanthoidians) -major extinctions within trilobites (again), eurypterids, echinoderms (with some major clade losses), conodonts (again), bryozoans (again), and ammonoids (for the first but not the last time) -a result of the spread of vascular land plants! With the first rain forest and the first seed plants in the continental interior, there was considerable burial of excess carbon (leading to cooler temperatures and reduced continental shelf space). More importantly, increased mechanical and chemical weathering on the continents leads to increased nutrients into the sea leading to marine phytoplankton booms leading to eutrophication and anoxia

Arrival of humans in Boreal Siberia

32 ka

Death from Above (Mesozoic) - Cretaceous-Paleogene

66 Ma asteroid strikes Yucatan Peninsula causing freezing temps. and collapse of photosynthesis (ended Age of Reptiles) this is the extinction event that eliminated the dominance of dinosaurs and allowed the adaptive radiation of mammals. -The K/Pg extinction (or boundary event): "K" is the formal symbol for the Cretaceous, and "Pg" for the Paleogene -transition from a gymnosperm-dominated flora to an angiosperm (flowering plant)-dominated on

Which of the following best describes the word "Science" as scientists use that term?

A type of inquire into nature characterized by the availability of empirically falsifiable hypotheses

"Homo opifex": The Artisans

All human cultures decorate their tools to some degree, and have objects whose primary function is decoration itself. And many decorate their bodies, from jewelry and clothing through body paint to scarification and tattoos.

"Homo poeticus": The Poets

All human cultures include poets: people who tell stories in verse (maybe not rhyming verse, but alliterative, or merely rhythymic)

Homo sapien differences

Anatomically, H. sapiens is distinct from H. neanderthalensis and H. rhodesiensis (and other relatives) by: -A flatter face -A face which is anatomically lower on the skull (as if it "slipped down"), creating our charactistically-big forehead -A true chin (forward projection of the base of the lower jaw), as opposed to the sloping-backwards shape of the lower jaw of other relatives In terms of the early anatomically modern H. sapiens we find a surprising lack of evidence for: -Finely made tools -Fishing or net-making -Long-distance goods exchange -Decoration (except there may be some Neanderthal beads) -Art (paintings, carvings) -Marked regionalization of culture -Rapid transformation of technologies

Mammoth Steppes: Lost Biomes of the Pleistocene:

In many of the places in world where tundra grows today, there were very different conditions during the Pleistocene. This was a very northern grassland/meadow environment called the mammoth steppe. In the mammoth steppes, there were far more plant species (including grasses) than in the tundra; there were very deep soils; permafrost was quite far below the surface, so the soils were better drained; and they supported much bigger biomass. Mammoths were not merely inhabitants of these steppes; they were likely the architects of them. Mammoths ripping up big chunks of grass, exposing soils and allowing other plants to recolonize. Furthermore, mammoth dung helped keep nutrients cycling through the environment (rather than locked up as in tundras). Loss of the mammoths would reduce the plant turnover and nutrient cycling, and the biome was replaced with tundra.

"Lying Stones"

Beringer: found fossils of whole animals and inscriptions in Hebrew, Latin, Arabic, Syriac; in some the name God written, considered actual signs from God -finds his name and discovers hoaxed by 2 rivals at university Motive: REVENGE

Sue Hendrickson

Black Hills Institute Larson paid land owner $5000 and found largest and most complete T Rex ever found -"$ paid was for prospecting, not specimen" FBI and Nat'l Guard raid BHI and seize "Sue" Judge: Property of Williams and due "fair value" -auctioned by Sotheby's for $8.3M (backed by Disney and McD's -Larson jailed for tax reasons

convergence

Independent evolution of some body form from different ancestral types (due to similar ecologies) i.e. tuna, sharks, dolphins

Which of the following is required for an event to be considered a mass extinction

It must affect many different groups of organisms, not just one clade

Pleistocene Overkill

Blitzkrieg: omputer models show that at reasonable rates of hunting success, human population growth, and reproduction rates of prey, you could in fact wipe out continents' worth of animals in a millennium or two! And given that in the New World the Clovis culture range is basically of just this length, it appears that this might have been the case. -Some animals (mammoths, mastodons, horses, etc.) show signs of direct hunting. But would humans have hunted the predators to death? While it is not improbable that humans hunted them directly on occassion, it is more likely that sabrecats, dire wolves, and the like underwent predator crash: humans overhunted the animals the predators were better adapted to eating. -Some survivors were able to undergo a trophic shift: for instance, the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus) initially fed on large land mammals all over the American West as well as beached whales and seals on the coastline during the Pleistocene, but with the megafaunal extinction survived only on the coast -ther predators survived by being generalists. While Smilodon and Panthera atrox were big-game specialists, the smaller P. onca (jaguar) and Puma concolor (puma, cougar, or mountain lion: they are all the same cat!) are generalists. Jaguars hunt everything from land animals to fish and turtles, and pumas have a similarly broad diet and an amazing habitat tolerance (from the high mountains to woodlands to plains to forests to rain forests)

Evidence humans spread over the world

Body fossils Artifacts (human trace fossils) "Genography": coordinating geographic position and genetic phylogenies

Conservation Paleontology

By looking at the fossil record of the latest Quaternary and early Holocene, we get a description of the biodiversity of the contemporary species prior to any significant influence of humans. Furthermore, more ancient crises (like PETM and mass extinction recoveries) give us evidence of how the biosphere reacts to tremendous rapid changes. This evidence from the fossil record allows conservation biologists to make better plans in dealing with current and near-future changes.

Linnaeus' Primates

It was proposed by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae, and means "the first ones". It isn't that Linnaeus thought these were the first animals who ever lived; it is named after a much more mundane reason: they are literally the first group of animals discussed in the book!

Scopes Monkey Trial

John Thomas Scope found guilty of Butler Act and fined $100, but it was overturned on a technicality (the jury, not the judge, should have set the fine!). The Butler Law remained on the books until 1967.

Stable isotopes are often used as estimator of past environmental conditions. Two well studied ones are 13C and 18O which are, respectively, estimators of:

CO2 and methane levels

Zombie taxa

Cases where fossils of already extinct fossils become reworked (from a channel deposit, cliff, etc.) and deposited in geologically-younger sediments, thus making it look as if the fossil species were alive long after it was actually dead.

Piltdown Man

Charles Dawson (and Arthur Woodward) discovered first British homminian (Eoanthropus dawsoni) - skull exceedingly human like, jaw/teeth very ape like -->conformed to prevailing wisdom of big brain first -discovered more fossils (only him again) at new site -upon his death, no new fragments were ever discovered -Upright theory became popularized -chemical dating confirmed it was medieval skull, 500 year old orangutan jaw, and fossil chimp teeth Dawson=serial hoaxer (38 "discoveries") Motive: FAME and CREDIBILITY OF BIG BRAIN

Planktonic

Colonial animals that floated in the water column, living by grabbing passing particles of food

Punctuated Equilibrium

Current thought sympatry rare cladogenesis>anagenesis evolutionary change concentrated in bursts/punctuations separated by long periods of stats (eq'bm) Species have relatively distinct beginnings

Denisovan

Denisova site in southcentral Siberia, between Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Here a handful of fossils (a toe bone, a finger bone, some teeth) have been found dated to 41 ka. Essentially nothing is known of their anatomy, but their genetic material is preserved and discovered to be closer to H. neanderthalensis than to us -An April 2014 study of the genomes and epigenomes of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans reveals that we differ from the other species in a few traits associated with the digestive system, but especially with genes activated in higher brain function.

Great Oxidation Event (Proterozoic Eon)

Dissolved iron absorbed O2, causing "rust" on sea floors (Banded Iron Formations - BIFs) -when iron used up, O2 added to atmosphere -anaerobic organisms devastated -green seas and orange sky turned blue -eukaryotes (with nucleus) arose (aerobic) -endosymbiosis (permanent incorporation of once-free-living cells into cells of eukaryotes)

Age of Reptiles (Mesozoic)

Diversity builds back - modern insects, crustaceans, bony fish, amphibians, early mammals, birds and feather dinosaurs, flowering plants

natural vs supernatural view of world origin

During the Age of Enlightenment (18th and early 19th Centuries) there were many arguments for and against naturalistic views of how the Universe operates and came to be. For example, David Hume observed order arising from mindless mechanistic processes (snowflakes from water, crystals from solution, and so forth), and considered that an ordered world might likewise come out of similar type processes. In contrast, others argued that the apparent Design of the Universe implied a Designer. This was most famously (although not firstly) argued as the "Watchmaker Argument" of William Paley in his 1802 Natural Theology.

Cold-blooded animals

Ectothermic Bradymetabolic Poikilotherms

Warm-blooded dinosaurs

Endothermic (small SA/V ratio decreased ability to hold heat) Tachymetabolic (bone reworking) Homeotherms (temps remain constant)

Geologic column (largest to smallest)

Eon, Era, Period, Epoch, Age (Stage)

E world vs D world

Erosion: generate (i.e. mountains, cliffs, etc.) Deposition: accumulate (i.e. glacier, river, delta, beach, desert, deep sea); where we find fossils

Megafaunal extinction in Africa

Essentially modern composition of the animal life in the Pleistocene (indeed, nearly modern in the Pliocene). So very little evidence for a Quaternary Period extinction among carnivores and herbivores from the continent of humanity's birth.

"Homo cicuritor": The Tamers.

Even though the actual first domestication of farm animal species was a relatively rare event, taming wild animals is practiced in most cultures. All sorts of animals can be tamed even if they aren't bred in captivity (and thus subjected to artificial selection.)

Avocational collectors

Largest group of fossil collectors generally interested in fossils and nature many important fossils found by them tend to work in known sites with many fossils

Megafaunal extinction in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia

Less well studied than many other regions, there were local mammoths and other proboscideans (such as species of Stegodon), rhinos, and deer which died out, as well as the giant orangutan relative Gigantopithecus and the tiny hobbit Homo floresiensis. (Indeed, on Flores Island there were giant storks, giant rats, giant lizards, and dwarf Stegodon: an odd community).

Why go back to the seas?

Food resources: consider that many non-aquatic and semi-aquatic animals (bears, otters, raccoons, fishing cats, some snakes, moose, humans, etc., etc.) feed from fresh water or the sea. There are lots of various types of food available. And water-adapted animals still capable of moving well on land (sea otters; marine iguanas; etc.) all feed on sea life. So adaptations to better access water food may be the main driver for the evolution of marine (and later fully pelagic) ways of life. Ease of movement: consider that sea turtles make migrations of hundreds of kilometers or more. Now consider that a migration of even a few kilometers on the part of a similar sized tortoise would be almost unthinkable. Relatively stable temperatures: more of a concern for ectotherms than endotherms, but water temperature varies much less throughout the year or by latitude than does air temperature

20th Cent: Begin. of 6th Mass Extinction

Like all mass extinctions, this stems from the fact that the environmental changes are happening faster than organisms can evolve to adapt to them. Although extinction rates are no where near the level of the Big Five, we have instigated the same type of causes that happened before -Overfishing, resulting in the collapse of many commercial fisheries around the world in order to feed a growing population -Habitat loss for farming, logging, and other development -Eutrophication from fertilizer and soil runoff, converting many places close to shore into "dead zones" -Ocean acidification, a byproduct of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, causing calcifying organisms like corals and mollusks to weaken and/or die.

Characteristics of whales

Like mammals: suckle their young with milk, have a limited amount of hair, have a four-chambered heart, are endothermic, have single lower jaw bone, etc. Different from mammals: their skin is mostly hairless; their nostrils have relocated to the tops of their heads (blowholes); even toothed whales only get one set of teeth (not two, as in other mammals); their forelimbs have been transformed into flippers; their hind limbs are extraordinarily vestigial, so that (with the very, very, very rare exception now and then) they do not emerge from the body; their tails end in horizontal soft-tissue flukes, etc.

Causes of Climate

-Insolation (incoming sunlight) -Atmospheric composition (may trap or reflect heat within atmosphere) -Albedo (reflectivity of surface)

New Seas (Paleozoic)

1st complex reef community

Paleozoic Era

Ancient animallife

Megafaunal extinction in South America

For much of the Cenozoic, South America was an island continent with a unique fauna of marsupials, endemic placentals, giant birds, and so forth, but during the Neogene an interchange of faunas with North America over the young Isthmus of Panama mixed the assemblages. Some South American animals did well in the North: opossums, armadillos, porcupines, ground sloths, glyptodonts. But far more North American animals did well in the South: proboscideans, horses, camels, dogs, cats, rodents, raccoon-relatives, peccaries, tapirs, deer, squirrels, rabbits, and so on. There was a major extinction of the native South American animals at this time. But some of the native forms and new immigrants thrived and diversified up to the Pleistocene, including the largest gylptodonts such as Doedicurus clavicaudatus, the largest ground sloths such as Megatherium americanum and nearly as large Eremotherium laurillardi (which ranged into North America as well), as well as a diversity of smaller sloths, camel-like Macrauchenia patachonica and rhino-like Toxodon platensis (last survivors of once-diverse radiations of South American hoofed mammals), the sabrecat Smilodon populator, various elephants such as Cuvieronius hyodon, Stegomastodon platensis and S. waringi (both genera were also present in North America earlier), as well as other diverse forms.

Mass extinctions

Geologically rapid disappearance of many groups, leaving "holes" in ecosystem allowing for adaptive radiation

"Homo maritimus": The Sailors

Human cultures near bodies of water make boats of various sorts. As mentioned last time, the colonization of Australia required the use of boats (since at no time was there direct land connection to the Indonesian peninsula even at the lowest sea levels of the Pleistocene.) In contrast, Neanderthals never seemed to have used boats to escape their last holdouts at places like Gibraltar, even though Africa was not far away. In the extreme case, the Polynesians colonized nearly half the surface of the planet (the Pacific) during the 1st millenium CE.

"Homo venator": The Hunters

Humans (and indeed our close living and extinct relatives) are hunters of small game, and nearly all humans (together with the non-"habiline" Homo species) hunt big game as well.

"Homo vagus": The Wanderers.

Humans travel

How does life respond to climate change

If Very Rapid: Game of Thrones (win or you die) If Moderate Rapid: (Scale of ecology) organisms migrate with shifts in climate If slow enough: life may actually change in response (evolve)

Infaunal benthic

Priapulids were and are an important group of predatory marine worms that live in burrows in the sediment

Nektonic

Primitive predatory jawed fish that patrolled the upper levels of the water column looking for prey

Population Bottleneck

Some analyses suggest that we are the descendants of a genetic "bottleneck" where the effective population size of humans some 70 ka or so was a mere 2000 or so individuals, and that this small population size existed for hundreds or thousands of years.

Which was NOT a trait expected to have been present in LUCA (the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all living things)?

aerobic

Diagenesis

chemical/physical alteration after burial

13C proxy

expresses ratio of 13C t0 12C -negative shift (excursion) means EITHER there is death of lots of organisms OR the release of a lot of methane -positive excursion means great increase in amount of living things

speculations

hypotheses that are potentially falsifiable if we had full knowledge of universe

Geopetal indicators

sedimentary features showing what was the original "up" direction

1967 case Epperson vs. Arkansas

"The overriding fact is that Arkansas' law selects from the body of knowledge a particular segment which it proscribes for the sole reason that it is deemed to conflict with a particular religious doctrine; that is, with a particular interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group." and "The state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them."

causal agent

"trigger" the initial phenomenon that starts the extinction event. For example, an asteroid impact, a volcanic eruption, et

Motives for hoaxers

$ Revenge Fame Increase in credibility of ideas

Australopithecus africanus

(African southern ape) was found in Pliocene-aged sediments of South Africa, followed in 1938 by more heavily-built Paranthropus robustus (robust near-man). These forms were fully-upright, smaller-brained, and African. - Richard and Mary Leakey (and their descendants), Donald Johanson, and their various colleagues and rivals, found numerous species of stem-humans ranging from essentially-modern forms of the late Pleistocene to all sorts of Pliocene and latest Miocene "ape-men". This secured the African origins of humanity, and the sequence of upright-first, big brained-second model.

Young Earth Creationism

(YEC): classic style Creationism. An early of only a few thousands or maybe tens of thousands of years, the Biblical Flood and Noah's Ark, a literal Garden of Eden at the beginning, etc., etc. The single most common belief in the US of all the ones listed here. Answers in Genesis and The Institute for Creation Research are the main "think" tanks for this movement. When pressed, many ID proponents reveal themselves to be YECs. BUT, despite what they claim, they are not Biblical literalists, because they accept the spherical Earth as a planet orbiting a star (the Sun) in a vast Milky Way galaxy in a universe of galaxies.

Deglaciation

-As northern sunlight gets warmer, glaciers melt back as the positive warming feedback occurs -Meltwater from continental ice flows back into seas, causing sea levels to rise and flood the continental shelf ---River channels flood, forming estuaries ---Land bridges become separated -The crust rebounds up as the ice melts (although it does so very slowly: Scotland, Scandinavia, and northern North America is still moving upwards after the end of the last glaciation) -Biomes move polarward -Masses of glacial drift was left behind -It turns out that deglaciation is fast: the switch from glacial phase to interglacial takes only 5-25 years! (However, it may take thousands of years for the effects to complete)

What is the fossil record good for?

-Direct evidence of transitions and origins of modern groups of organisms -ONLY evidence of extinct branches of the Tree of Life -ONLY evidence of the reality of mass extinction events: without the fossil record, we would not be aware that situations can arise that wipe out huge majorities of the living individuals and species on the Earth! -And many fossils are aesthetic pleasing, to the point that most nations have national parks or monuments centered on such fossils Pragmatic benefits: Fossils are one of the primary indicators of past climate change (which we saw early in the course) Fossils are markers of "pristine" (non-human influenced) biodiversity

Central Tenets of Evolutionary History

-Diversity of living things is the product of descent with modification -new species are the modified descendants of previously existing species

Human origin theories (Big Brain First vs. Upright Stance)

-Humans were more closely related to the African great apes (the chimp genus Pan and the gorilla genus Gorilla) than to all other living animals -Stem-humans originated in Africa, and spread to the rest of the world from there VS The late 19th Century saw discoveries of early members of the human lineage found in Eurasia, but not yet Africa: -Essentially modern human fossils from the late Pleistocene -Somewhat older fossils of a robust, thick-browed form Homo neanderthalensis -Even older Pleistocene fossils, smaller brained but fully upright Many speculated that the ancestors of these forms would likely have been a big-brained animal with a sloping back. The idea was that brains are what make humans humans, so that this "essential trait" evolved first --> used without evidence --> Piltdown hoax

Hominoidea

-Hylobatidae: gibbons, or "lesser apes"; 17 or so species in four genera; limited to Southeast Asia and Indonesia; extremely acrobatic swinging animals -Hominidae: "great apes", divided into: ---Ponginae, represented today solely by the two species of Pongo (orangutans) ---Homininae, the African great apes, divided into: -------Gorillinae, represented today solely by the two species of Gorilla -------Hominini (hominids), subdivided into: ---------------Panina (paninans), chimps (Pan troglodytes), bonobos (Pan paniscus), and all (now extinct) taxa closer to them than to Homo sapiens ---------------Hominina (homininans), Homo sapiens and all (now-extinct) taxa closer to us than to Pan

The Glacial Phase

-Ice sheets grow due to positive feedback of increasing reflective surfaces -Increased continental ice (up to 3 km thick!) means sea levels drop up to 150 m or so, shifting the coastlines as far as the edge of the continental shelf ---River channels carve down to the new lower sea level ---Lands once separated by shallow seas become contiguous, allowing land-to-land connections -Build up of continental ice causes depression of the rock into the mantle -Biomes follow their preferred environmental conditions, so generally move equatorward away from the poles

De-Extinction

-In vitro fertilization using frozen sperm. The first generation would be a hybrid (for example, a woolly mammoth-Indian elephant cross), but successive backcross hybrids would increase the percentage of original fossil material. -Cloning from a frozen cell: a nucleus from a fossil is inserted into a de-nucleated ovum of a related species, stimulated to divide, and placed in a surrogate mother. -Sequencing DNA from fossil specimens, creating artificial chromosomes, and cloned as above. Two projects are ongoing. The so-called Lazarus Project is working to de-extinct the gastric-brooding frog Rheobatrachus silus, which was wiped out in the wild in the mid-1980s. Another team has attempted to clone the extinct-in-2000 Iberian ibex Capra pyrenaica pyrenaica (the clone died minutes after birth). Problems: -Limited gene pool: how many different individuals might be cloned? -Loss of any behavioral information transmitted from parent to offspring. -Very incomplete ecosystems (most species won't be available)

Evidence and suggested causes of Great Leap Forward

-It was once thought be associated with the evolution of a mutant FOXP2 gene, which allows fine motor control of the mouth and tongue, however, with our understanding of the Neanderthal genome, it appears these peoples had the same version of the FOXP2 gene we do. -Unlike other homininans, we have a substantial amount of seafood in our diet: fish, shellfish, and the like. So many human cultures lived near the coastline. -H. sapiens seems uniquely to be a boating species -Arrival of modern humans seems to result in mass extinction of many local animals -humans seem to have lived in small bands, about 30 or so at most, made up of closely related individuals -larger end would be tribes: units of a few hundreds, still closely related by birth and maintaining identity by means of unique customs, languages, and a near constant state of low-level "warfare". The ability for any one band/tribe to conquer or absorb another would be relatively limited. -Foragers can have a very good diet, but in order to expand a population it has to grow by "extensification: spreading out to new lands. Because of a reliance on extensification, and our amazing tolerance to different environmental conditions, H. sapiens began to spread out to all corners of the world.

Whale origins

-Leigh Van Valen proposed that whales had their origins near or among the various groups of carnivorous hoofed mammals of the early Cenozoic: mesonychids, arctocyonids, and the like. The skulls definitely looked like Basilosaurus and other basal whales. -DNA-based phylogenetic analyses of placental mammals showed that whales were not merely related to artiodactyls: they were members of Artiodactyla and were the sister taxon to hippos. (A new name, Whippomorpha was proposed for this clade.) -The above idea was initially controversial to paleontologists: there were no definite artiodactyl synapmorphies found in modern whales, or between hippos and extinct whales. By then, the feet of Basilosaurus and other basilosaurids were discovered, but the astragalus was so reduced it wasn't clear if they had double-pulley astragali or not. -But a series of new discoveries (mostly by the team of Phil Gingerich) in Egypt and Pakistan started to reveal ever older and more primitive whales. And these included double-pulley ankle bones and other artiodactyl synapomorphies.

Maastrichtian Regression

-Maastrichtian: last Age of Late Cretaceous Epoch; Regression: any period of sea-level drop -climates become more continental and extreme (hotter summers, colder winters) -changes in climate produces change in ocean circulaton -changes in growing seasons and ranges of plants (and thus animals that ate them) -gradual change over period of millions of years

Proto-human (basal homininans through "habilines") diet

-Many homininans have relatively simple tooth wear (limited pitting or scratching or so forth, and often in the same direction) Two exceptions are Paranthropus robustus, and the advanced members of Homo we will see next lecture. This suggests a greater range of diets in these forms than in most of the others. -Isotopic analysis shows that "Australopithecus" sediba had a diet strongly skewed to C3 plants, that P. boisei had one skewed very much to C4 plants, and that the others all showed intermediate (mixed) values. In the case of "Australopithecus" sediba it indicates it was primarily a forest-dwelling animal eating forest foods. In fact, combining the type of wear on its teeth and the isotopic values, it may well have eaten a substantial amount of tree and branch bark, as do modern gorillas. In the case of Paranthropus boisei, it is possible that it ate a lot of grasses. However, lacking horse-type grazing teeth, it may have eaten a lot of rushes and sedges, including their tubers.

Diff. btwn. PETM and current human global warming

-PETM during greenhouse world, we are in interglacial of Quarternary Ice Age -Ours is warming from CO2, PETM was mostly methane -rate of emissions presently greater than PETM pulses

Milankovitch Cycles

-Precession of the Equinox: the axis of rotation on the Earth spins like a top on a cycle of about 26 kyr -Axial tilt (also called "obliquity"): the tilt of the axis ranges back and forth on a cycle of 41 kyr -Orbital eccentricity: on a cycle of 100 kyr, the orbit goes from more to less circular. -result in different amounts of sunlight being received in different latitudes at different times of the year -If the summer stays colder, more ice remains from the previous winter. Since ice has high albedo, it reflects more light as visible light, which goes right back into space. This lets the Earth get colder still, so the ice grows from year to year, causing the ice to advance. -In contrast, if the northern summers get warmer, the ice melts back, exposing more dark soil. Dark soil absorbs sunlight and re-radiates it back as thermal energy (heat). More heat melts the ice more, which exposes more dark soil, which warms stuff up more, and so on.

Anti-Commercial Arguments

-Removed from research, public, posterity -Reasearchers no longer have access to private lands -sometimes, damage fossils and people

Basilosaurus ("King Reptile")

-Richard Harlan interpreted the teeth as some sort of strange shellfish, but the vertebrae as coming from a giant marine reptile -Sir Richard Owen was given some Basilosaurus specimens to study, he recognized that the teeth were in fact the teeth of this animal (correct), that it was an early primitive whale (correct), and that it was a herbivore (incorrect). (He also tried to give it the new name "Zeuglodon", in blatant violation of the principle of priority!) -the teeth at the front of the snout were very different from the premolars and molars, the nostrils are halfway up the snout (unlike in the front of the snout in land mammals, and on top of the head in modern whales) and the body was long and eel-like (although not as eel-like as shown in this picture.)

press extinctions

-Series of events spread out for 100s of thousands of years. -In principle, it allows for evolution to select variations throughout this extended interval, so a taxon which is doing poorly early in the event might become progressively better at surviving it over time

Primates

-Strepsirrhini, including the Lemuriformes (lemurs) and Lorisiformes (lorises, pottos, and galagos) -Haplorrhini, further subdivided into: ---Tarsiriiformes (tarsiers) ---Anthropoidea (or sometimes "Simiformes"): monkeys and apes, further subdivided into: -------Plathyrrhini (New World Monkeys) -------Catarrhini (Old World primates), further subdivided into: ------------Cercopithecoidea (Old World Monkeys) ------------Hominoidea (apes, including humans)

The Interglacial Phase

-Temperatures continue to warm, or stabilizes (at least until the new glacial phase occurs) -The drift becomes converted to soil -The onset of glacial phases is actual relatively slow: it takes longer for things to cool than to heat

Historic cases of human-induced extinction

-The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) of Mauritius was extinguished not so much by direct overhunting but by introduction to its island home of rats and pigs, which ate the eggs and babies of this giant flightless pigeon. The species was extinct by 1662. -The Great auk (Pinguinus impennis) was a large flightless sea bird of the North Atlantic. It is the actual species for which the name "penguin" was coined (and later transferred to the distantly-related Southern Ocean clade we now call by this name). This was directly overhunted to extinction. The last definite sighting was on 3 July 1844, when a sailor records wringing the necks of two individuals. (A later sighting in 1852, however, might be valid). -Stellar's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas), the 8-10 m long largest of the manatee-dugong family, lived in the northernmost Pacific. First known to Western science in 1741, it was hunted to extinction in only 27 years by whalers.

Cause of Quaternary Ice Age

-The isolation of Antarctica and the rise of the circum-Antarctic current at the end of the Eocene was one big shift (from the Greenhouse to Icehouse conditions) -the rise of the Himalayan Plateau around 7 Ma also dropped the temperature further (erosion of the uplifted landmass scrubbed CO2 from the atmosphere, producing less greenhouse gasses) -The final push was (probably) the rise of the Isthmus of Panama, separating the Atlantic and Pacific and producing the Oceanic Conveyor Belt. This is the circulation system which drags salty water down into the deep ocean in the North Atlantic, where it gets sequestered in the deep sea for 1000 years or so

Re-Wilding

If a species still persists in some region, but has undergone extirpation at another, it is possible to rewild it: that is, to reintroduce the species to a habitat in which it is lost. These efforts are already ongoing at various sites in the world, and generally show promise (so long as introduced invasives can be eliminated, too.) But what about cases where the extinct taxon is globally extinct? Problems: -Although close relatives, they are NOT the same species, and will have different requirements and habits -Indeed, they would technically be invasive species, with all the problems that contains (with rare exceptions: horses for North America and Siberia, for instance) -The global climate change means that the environmental conditions will NOT be those of a Pleistocene interglacial anymore, but something new -And pragmatically, if Western farmers objected to the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, they are unlikely to accept prides of lions and herds of elephants wandering over their ranches!

Human induced extinctions in Continental North America

-The passenger pigeon (Ecopistes migratorius), once the most common bird species in the continent. Their flocks had hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions of individuals. Wiped out in the wild by the end of the 19th Century by a combination of habitat loss (deforestation for farms) and large-scale commercial hunting for feathers and meat; the last individual "Martha" died in the Cincinnati Zoo on 1 September 1914. -The Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), which lived as far north as New York and Wisconsin. Killed as commercial pests, and for their feathers, and vanished in the wild during the early 20th Century. The last individual "Incas" died on 18 February 1918, in the very same cage that "Martha" had died in. -The ivory-billed woodpecker (Campephilus principalis), the largest North American woodpecker. Vanished on the mainland by 1944 by overlogging of their habitat in the American southeast. Hopeful signs that it might have survived in the early 2000s have not panned out, and it seems likely these were misreports of the more common (but similar) Dryocopus pileatus. -Bison bison came very close

Potential trigger for megafaunal extinction: Humans

-The timing and the intensity of the extinction events seems to coincide extraordinarily well with arrival of modern humans into the respective regions. Additionally, the fact that the extinctions are limited to larger-bodied animals (either the likely targets of direct hunting, potential rivals, or animals whose resources were robbed as they became extinct) very much matches the expectations of encounters with foraging human tribes (who would be unlikely to effect the extinction of common small-bodied animals or marine invertebrates).

Fellow Travelers

If you look at the list of the largest native North American mammals today, it turns out four of the most common (the moose Alces alces, the elk Cervus elaphus, the brown bear Ursus arctos, and the wolf Canis lupus) are all very recent immigrants. Indeed, they may have arrived in North America with the Paleo-indians! These species also live in Eurasia, and so are much better adapted to living alongside humans and our effects.

Homo sapiens

-We are mammals (have fur; give milk; deciduous dentition; four-chambered heart; endothermy; etc.) -We are therians, the subgroup of mammals containing marsupials, placentals, and the extinct stem-lineages of both clades (live birth [internalized, unshelled egg retained in the body]; a placenta for at least some period of time; parasagittal stance (convergent with dinosaurs); large external ear pinnae; etc.) -We are placentals (young retained in the body until late in development; various specialization of the teeth; etc.) -We are primates (claws transformed into nails; excellent color vision; forward directed eyes with binocular vision; grasping hands; loss of whiskers; reduced number of teeth; reduced olfactory ability; etc.)

Main questions of human evolution

-Where did Humanity come from? Africa. -What did Humanity come from? A lineage of apes adapted to more open-land environments. -What were the first people like? Depending on how broadly you define "people", either very similar to modern chimpanzees (i.e., "people" = "Hominina"), large-brained long-legged animal possessing control of fire and a relatively sophisticated tool kit (i.e., "people" = "Homo"), or identical to modern people (i.e., "people" = "behaviorally modern Homo sapiens"). -How did the first people live? Regardless of the definition of "people" (see above), almost certainly in small bands practicing hunting and gathering.

Pro-Commercial Arguments

-able to dirty work for museums and universities (very skilled) -fossils will otherwise erode away -Legal in some coutnries -Avenue for avocational collectors without getting Ph.D -many species are common

Whales and hippos

-both share dense bones; nurse their young underwater; and have reduced fur and a lack of sebaceous glands

"Pithecanthropines"

-considerable increase of body size (heights up to 1.85 m are known) and of relative brain size with the rise of pithecanthropine-grade Homo -there is circumstantial evidence for the use of fire by these peoples the diet includes a considerable fraction of meat of large animals, including mastodonts and mammoths - the build of typical "pithecanthropines" is far more modern than earlier phases: although not exactly of the same proportions as H. sapiens, their limbs indicate that like us they could engage in long-distance endurance running -associated with the Acheulean toolkit with its characteristic "hand axe"

Deccan traps volcanism

-gigantic series of lava flows in western India -only Siberian traps, and probably CAMP bigger -formed in 1 million years or less (not single event) -long term global effects due to greenhouse gases -MAJOR event that might have contributed to K/Pg extnction

Siberian traps (P/Tr)

-huge lava field in Siberia -8x level of atmospheric CO2 -extreme global warming, warming of sea floor, melting of methane clathrates --> further global warming, ocean acidification -damaged ozone led to increased UV exposure -drops in O2 due to deaths of plants

Effects of P/Tr

-many algal mats (stromatolites) in shallow seas -no reefs or calcareous algae -temperatures were lethally hot (water starved of nutrients) -very few numbers of recovery fauna (both land and sea) -best land survivors: those that nest in burrows; those that may have been mountain-dwellers; and those which were semi-aquatic -seas dominated by swimming, crawling, and burrowing, land soon to be dominated by reptiles and dinosaurs

Commoditization encourages

-overexploitation of resources -collect for trophy, not science -incentivizes fraud

Potential trigger for megafaunal extinction: Comet Impact

In 2007 R.B. Firestone and colleagues proposed that a cometary impact over North America around 12.9 ka was responsible for the North American megafaunal extinction, the end of the Clovis culture, and the trigger for the short-term Younger Dryas cooling event. This was claimed on the basis of supposed extraterrestrial material of various sorts (microdiamonds, iridium; possible tektites; fullerenes, etc.), as well as soot and charcoal, in unusual black carbon-rich layers at that time. -But even if true, this cometary impact does not coincide at all with the Eurasian or the Australian extinction event.

Megafaunal extinction in Boreal Eurasia

In addition to Mammuthus primigenius (the woolly mammoth: also in North America) and Coelodonta antiquitatus (the woolly rhino), there was the giant Irish elk ( Megaloceros giganteus), the cave lion ( Panthera spelea), the cave bear ( Ursus speleus), and Homo neanderthalensis.

"Australopithicines"

-these species are sometimes called "apemen", since they are generally upright like humans but still had fairly ape-like brains and snouts. -"Gracile australopithecines": These basal forms show the rise of a fully-upright stance; a shift of relative brain size from essentially chimp-like to larger; and a habitat shift from the marginal forests to the savannas -"Robust australopithecines": These have greatly enlarged molars and enormous jaw muscle; essentially primate horses; larger brain size than chimps or Praeanthropus -associated with the Oldowan toolkit: a simple set of stone-tools shaped and flaked into choppers, cutters, hammers, etc. These are marginally better than non-human living primates can make -"plains apes": hominids adapted to life outside the forest

3 evolutionary faunas

-three sets of organisms who tended to share the same fates -Cambrian (still present, rare), Paleozoic (survives at moderate levels), Modern (goes back all the way to Cambrian) -Cambrian: trilobite, live close to sediment/water interface -Paleozoic: Brachipod, shelled, suspenion feeders (corals, brachiopods, and rare exception cephalopod) -Modern: bivalve/gastropod, squirming, crawling, or deep-burrowing firms (nearly all move)

Problems of marine life

Locomotion: except for animals that just walk on the sea floor, they need to swim somehow. Some do it by undulating the whole body; others with just the tail (which is normally flattened or has some kind of fluke); others have webbed hands and feet; still others have hands and feet modified into paddles. Breathing: all amniotes still need to breathe air with their lungs. A few (some sea snakes and sea turtles) actually supplement this with air absorbed through (of all things) the rectum! Feeding: there are some marine herbivores (sea turtles, sea cows, marine iguanas, etc.); others are plankton eaters; but most eat fish or other marine amniotes. But getting the food is different in the water than on land. Reproduction: amniotes all use internal fertilization, so that copulation is pretty much the same as on land. The main change is birth. Amniotic eggs cannot be laid in the water, so egg layers have to come onto land to breed. But some reptiles actually internalized their eggs, so that the young are born live. In placental mammals that is already the case; however, pinnipeds still give birth to young on land (indeed, they remain on land for some time before they can learn to swim). In contrast, sirenians and whales give birth in the water where the young are born tail first (so that they are able to rely on their mom for oxygen until the last possible section).

Y Chromosome Adam

Male equivalent of mitochondrial eve

Megafaunal extinction in Beringia

Many fauna shared in common between Boreal Eurasia and Continental North America.

Irreducible Complexity (ID)

Michael Behe's contribution. Irreducible complexity refers to any system "composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one part causes the system to effectively cease functioning." In practice, however, how does one demonstrate the appropriate level to look for IC? And at what point can you establish it is irreducible? Behe's particular favorite examples (the bacterial flagellum and the blood clotting mechanisms of vertebrates) have already been shown to be exaltations and other modifications of simpler structures. However, Behe refuses to acknowledge the refutation of these cases.

Mesozoic Era

Middle animal life; Age of Dinosaurs

Mitochondrial Eve

Mitochondria are passed on only from the mother, so they can be used as markers to look down the maternal line. It turns out that the most recent common mother of all living humans seems to have been a woman who lived about 200 ka (152-234 ka), probably in Africa and long after the split between the H. heidelbergensis-neanderthalensis and H. rhodesiensis-sapiens lines (the last mother through whom all women can be traced)

Unique human traits

Morphological traits: -Fully upright stance -Greatly enlarged brain -Facial retraction (that is, essentially no snout) -Reduced body hair -A chin -Precision grip between thumb and all other fingers Physiological -Menopause (most other mammals do not have this; instead, female fertility declines relatively gradually with age, much like male fertility) -Long adolescence (most other mammals have a very short period between childhood and adulthood) -Longevity (most mammals of our mass live far shorter lives) Behavioral -Complex symbolic language* -Collective learning (discoveries of one person or one generation get added to the next, and so on) -Mating pair bonds -Long distance travel -Cooperative hunting* Technological/Cultural -Stone tools* -Fire use -Boats -Art* -Domestication of other animals and plants* *present in other animals

Which idea of Transmutationism was retained into modern evolutionary theory?

New species are direct descendants of species that lived earlier in time

Lazarus taxa

Not necessarily associated with mass extinctions, but any taxon which temporarily disappears from the fossil record. Presumably the lineage persisted either at some non-preserved location, or at highly reduced abundance, only to recover later. This makes it looks like it "rose from the dead".

Old Earth Creationism

OEC, from herein): this includes the Day/Age creationists or Gap theorist mentioned last time. They accept geology and Big Bang cosmology, but reject evolution as a cause for the diversity of Life and the origin of species. This system is fairly rare in the US today, but has support from organizations like Reasons to Believe. Also, some of the major public ID proponents (Behe, for instance) probably fall in this category: an ancient Earth, but no significant role for natural selection or large-scale connections in the Tree of Life. OECs are in conflict with basic science as they require supernatural explanations for a phenomenon already well-explained by science, and with the Young Earth Creationism by a number of theological issues (especially the existence of billions of years of death and suffering prior to the Garden of Eden and subsequent Fall of Man.)

Arrival of humans into East Asia

Oldest good date at 36 ka.

Basal Homininans

Over all, it appears that the basal homininan grade represents apes adapted to the margins of forests and/or dry rather than rain forests. They were still at least partially arboreal. There is no sign of any higher level of intelligence or technology in these species than in chimps or gorillas or orangutans: they were simply a drier, slightly more upright, variety of chimp.

Sir Richard Owen and Thomas Henry Huxley primates

Owen claimed that there structures in the human brain (in particular, the hippocampus) which were not present in the brains of other primates. From this, he argued that humans could not evolve from other primates, and indeed this fit his rejection of descent with modification in general. In contrast, Huxley showed that the hippocampus was indeed present in other primates, and that a gradation extends from humans, apes such as gorillas, chimps, and orangutans, and then "lower primates" and other mammals.

What enabled dinosaurs to reach such large size?

Parasiggital stance More Co2 and O2 intake led to more primary productivity/energy which led to more potential for size due to wider base of the pyramid Air sacs enabled breathing thru lungs one way Four chambered hearts Led to extinction: Placental mammals: larger turnover birth rate (more susceptible at bigger sized to extinction)

Today's animals

Phanerozoic Eon Cenozoic Era Quaternary Period Holocene Epoch Age of Humans

Post-Megafaunal World: Trophic Shift for Humanity

Previous to the megafaunal extinctions, humans could continue to expand their food base by extensification. But when the continental regions were fully occupied, and much of the easy meals (megafauna) gone, we begin to see a shift in how humans obtain their food. This is intensification: increasing the yield (productivity) of a region by modifying the landscape. The extreme verion of this is agriculture, but historically there are other methods as well. -For example, some Native American foragers would clear cut patches in the forest, which tended to attract animals which prefer the forest margin habitat. An extreme example is the "fire stick farming" method in Australia (and probably elsewhere), where local foragers would light grasslands on fire to drive forth prey and cook in place tubers, burrowing animals, and so on.

Megafaunal extinction in Continental North America

Prior to the megafaunal extinctions, continental North America south of the Ice was one of the most diverse assemblages of large bodied mammals the world has ever seen; rivaling or surpassing the modern Africa savannas. Among the notable victims were the giant short-faced bear Arctodus simus, the giant American lion (which now appears to be a jaguar-like cat) Panthera atrox, the dire wolf Canis dirus, the North American sabretooth cat Smilodon fatalis, and the giant condor-like Teratornis merriami among carnivores; and the extremely tall Columbian plains mammoth Mammuthus columbi, the more woodland American mastodon Mammut americanum, the giant black bear-sized beaver Castoroides ohoiensis, Yesterday's camel Camelops hesternus, the stagmoose Cervalces scotti, the huge broadheaded bison Bison latifrons, several species of native horses, various species of ground sloth such as elephant-sized Eremotherium laurillardi, rhino-sized Megalonyx jeffersoni, and bear-sized Nothrotheriops shastensis, and the giant glyptodont Glyptotherium arizonae among the herbivores. The sloths and glyptodonts were recent immigrants from South America.

Basic trends of whale evolution

Raoellidaeà > Pakicetidaeà > Ambulocetusà > Remingtonocetidaeà > "Protocetids" > "Basilosaurids" > Neoceti Mostly lived in water, fed on land > Good walker, ears adapted for land, ate fish > like a mammalian crocodile > fully marine, lived near shore, reduced legs, ate fish > reduced weight support (pelvis and vertebrae separated) and noses still on snout > fully marine animals (could not come on land), primitive basilosaurus all but Neoceti are archaeocetes (occur during Eocene) missing groups between basilosaurids and neoceti

pulse extinctions

Rapid, catastrophic events; do not allow for adaptive change during event itself Game of Thrones "win or you die"

Commercial collectors

Rarest group specialize in particular regions best outfits able to field teams and run prep. labs some cooperate with researchers

Cenozoic Era

Recent animal life; Age of mammals

Previous proposals for whale origins

Remington Kellogg -Marine reptiles? Nope, whales are clearly mammals -Marsupials? Nope, whales are clearly placentals -Insectivores? At that time, "insectivores" was the term used for the group that includes shrews, moles, hedgehogs, and their kin, as well as diverse extinct mammals. Insectivora was pictured as the paraphyletic source for all other placental groups. So this was like the "thecodont" hypothesis for the origin of birds: it was actually not saying anything other than "whales are placentals". -Creodonts? This term refers to an extinct group of carnivorous placentals. -Pinnipeds? -Sirenians? -Perissodactyls? These are the odd-toed hoofed mammals: rhinos, tapirs, horses, and their extinct relatives. -Artiodactyls? These are the even-toed hoofed mammals. Artiodactyls are specialized in having a double pulley astragalus (one of the larger ankle bones. Major groups of artiodactyls are the tylopods (camels and their extinct relatives), swine (pigs and peccaries), ruminants (deer, cattle, antelopes, pronghorns, giraffes, and various other forms), and hippos.

Archaeoraptor

Reports of feathered dinosaurs made int'l news Farmers from Liaoning China collected and sold specimens of a long-tailed bird with very advanced wings (raptor bird) - sold in Tuscon rock show, bought by Steve Czerkas Nat Geo writing article, Czerkas tried to get scientific pub. but repeatedly denied (Nature) Xu Xing (paleontologist) found it was a composite -front end = derived bird and back end = microraptor NG retracted their article MOTIVE: $

Origins of Humanity (Cenozoic)

Rise of plains-dwelling primates in Africa about 7 Ma Homo sapiens about 190 ka Behaviorally modern human about 60-70 ka agriculture about 10ka (humans regionally dominate ecosystem)

Effects of asteroid (K/Pg)

S-T: -release lots of energy -bursts of light would destroy materials for kilometers around -shockwaves felt around world (would result in tidal waves) -"Easy Bake Oven Effect": infrared radiation would increase temps. by 8-10x hottest temp. baking living tissues L-T: -vaporized material in air reduces amount of sunlight -reduced photosynthesis killing off land plants and sea algae -collapse of foodwebs Similar to effects of what would be that of nuclear war

K/Pg predictions

S-T: -release lots of energy -bursts of light would destroy materials for kilometers around -shockwaves felt around world (would result in tidal waves) -"Easy Bake Oven Effect": infrared radiation would increase temps. by 8-10x hottest temp. baking living tissues L-T: -vaporized material in air reduces amount of sunlight -reduced photosynthesis killing off land plants and sea algae -collapse of foodwebs Similar to effects of what would be that of nuclear war

Arrival of humans into Sahul

Sahul is a name given to the landmass comprised of New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania (but NOT New Zealand: thus, it is a subset of "Australasia"). During glacial maxima, there are direct land connections between all three landmasses, although the Sahul is still isolated from the Malay Peninsula (the fully-exposed region of Indonesia). The oldest well-dated human remains in the Sahul are 46 ka (previously considered 41-40 ka) specimens from Lake Mungo. There are other fossils that have been dated as old as 68 ka, but the uncertainty of these measurements are very high. However, arrival of humans in the 60-45 ka range seems most likely.

Mary Anning

Sally sells seashells discovered first great marine reptiles in England well educated, but very poor

Patterns of Megafaunal extinctions

Size Pattern:Overall, there is an important thread to all these extinctions: they strongly bias towards size Regional Patterns: Why No African Megafaunal Extinction?: If we look at the differences in regional intensity of extinction, we notice a pattern among land mammals greater than 40 kg (88 lbs) adult body mass: -Sahul (Australia and New Guinea): 93.8% extinction (15 of 16 genera) -South America: 79.3% extinction (46 of 58 genera) -North America: 73.3% extinction (33 of 45 genera) -Europe: 30.4% extinction (7 of 23 genera) -Subsaharan Africa: 4.5% extinction (2 of 44 genera) Regions in which no homininan (or indeed, no hominoid!) had ever lived prior to the arrival of H. sapiens saw truly tremendous extinctions; Europe (and Asia, not shown)--where earlier species of Homo had lived by and hunted the local megafauna for hundreds of thousands of years--shows intermediate levels; and Africa--in which Hominina, and indeed Homo sapiens, first evolved and spent most of its/our evolutionary history--shows essentially none. The megafauna of Africa co-evolved with us, and so had much longer time to adapt to our escalating ability to hunt; the Eurasian forms had at least some experience with human hunters of some species; but the Brave New Worlds first encounters were with fully modern humans. Timing: the signal is very clear on a broad scale: Australian forms undergo the strongest intensity of extinction in the 45-40 ka range; Boreal Eurasian forms tend to die out in the 30-25 ka range (with some late survivors); American ones in the 13-11.5 ka range. Intriguingly, these match pretty closely the arrival time of H. sapiens (or at least continued presence of them) to these respective regions.

Elvis taxa

Species which converge upon the form of a taxon which went extinct. Thus they are "impersonators" of the original.

Bad Moon Rising (Hadeon)

Tellus collides with Theia creating Earth and Moon -created magma ocean on Earth--> cooled to water ocean

Daniel vs. Waters

The Court ruled that creationism--as inherently religious--was not objectively part of a secular program of education -In response, "Creationism" evolved into "Creation Science". The idea was that by putting "Science" in the name it could now be taught as science. However, there was no actual change in content or evidence, just a rebranding

Habilines

The basal members of the genus Homo show a marked increase in brain size over their "australopithecine" relatives; these species were relatively gracile, and show evidence of an increase of meat-eating over more basal lineages (some from hunting, mostly from scavenging)

Post-Megafaunal World: Last Holdouts

The last Megaloceros survived until a mere 6 ka (that is, 4000 BCE); and mammoths and some Caribbean ground sloths as recent as 4 ka (a mere 2000 BCE)! However they only survived on islands or other environments isolated from human presence.

Edwards vs. Aguillard

The law in question was Louisiana's 1981 "Balanced Treatment of Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act" -The Act impermissibly endorses religion by advancing the religious belief that a supernatural being created humankind. The legislative history demonstrates that the term "creation science," as contemplated by the state legislature, embraces this religious teaching. The Act's primary purpose was to change the public school science curriculum to provide persuasive advantage to a particular religious doctrine that rejects the factual basis of evolution in its entirety. Thus, the Act is designed either to promote the theory of creation science that embodies a particular religious tenet or to prohibit the teaching of a scientific theory disfavored by certain religious sects." -So Creation Science was out. It was rebranded again, and now called "Intelligent Design" or "ID" for short.

New biomes in the Pleistocene

The tundra is a lowland, generally coastal environment. The vegetation is often descended from mountain species, and are very low to the ground. It dominates the polar regions today. However, during most of the Pleistocene the cold environment was dominated by the mammoth steppe. This was dominated by grasses rather than low flowers, and had much higher diversity of plants (and of animals feeding them). Mammoth steppes had much higher productivity than tundra does. They required mammoths and other large animals to form: these fertilized the steppes with their feces, and exposed soils which allowed for various plant species to colonize and grow.

Darwin and Wallace's Natural Selection

They had discovered a mechanism to produce design without any need for outside influence: simply variation, heredity, and superfecundity.

Tibetan Plateau

Third Pole "Out of Tibet"/"Third Pole to the North Pole" hypothesis is compelling: after all, animals adapted to the cold Tibetan Plateau would do fine when the world began to chill

Intelligent Design

This was an attempt to remove references to God and the Bible from materials promoting essentially the same arguments as before, in the hopes that in so doing it would not seem religious. However, despite what people in some intellectual circles think, it was just exactly the same idea as before. -The ID proponents organized new sets of campaigns for laws around the country in the 1990s, such as "Teach the Controversy" and "Critical Analysis of Evolution" (basically new incarnations of "equal time" or "balanced treatment"). -The Dover ruling ground ID in its track, and the movement as such has stalled. But that doesn't mean that evolution deniers have given up. Over the last decade they continue to support "teach the controversy" laws, "strengths and weaknesses" laws, and "academic freedom" laws (which are all updates on the old "balanced treatment" or "equal time" laws).

The Drift

Unconsolidated, unlithified sediment with particle sizes ranging from erratics to rock flour (rock pulverized to the fineness of flour). Sometimes this simply covers the landscape, with soils on top of it, but often it is shaped into a variety of different unusual land forms which are sometimes streamlined with a strong orientation which parallels any striations, but can also look like such things as an inverted river channel. Over the large scale, they show patterns like lobes.

"Homo piscator": The Fishers

Unlike our relatives, however, we make sea food (or freshwater food), a large part of the protein in our diet.

Environments least likely to produce fossils

Up in the mountains, on cliff faces

dead clade walking

When a taxon survives at low diversity and abundance after a mass extinction, but fails to become reestablished and goes extinct at the next geologic interval.

Specified Complexity (ID)

William Dembski's contribution. Under this idea, specified patterns are ones that admit short descriptions; complex patterns are ones unlikely to occur by chance. Other mathematicians demonstrated flaws in this logic.

Geocentrism

Yes, there are still hold to the view that the Earth is in the physical center of the universe, and the Sun and stars orbit around it. Just like it says in the Bible (or, basically, in all ancient cultures, because that's what it looks like.) But even these reject an aspect of the Biblical literal view of the Cosmos

defaunation

a combination of global extinction, regional extinction (aka "extirpation"), and population decline

The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth

a series of 90 essays in twelve volumes published from 1910 to 1915 by the evangelical Protestant Bible Institute of Los Angeles. A Fundamentalist is ultimately someone who holds the views expressed in these books. This was the foundational set of documents for a new literalist movement in North American religious thinking

Flat Earthers

a truly literalist Biblical view

Day/Age Chronologies

an ancient idea that the "days" in Genesis are not literal 24 hr periods, but are metaphorical "days" or "ages". Thus, each "Day" could be some vast chunk of Earth history. Unfortunately for this model, the argument fails when the particular sequence of phenomenon in Genesis 1 or the (contradictory) sequence in Genesis 2 are compared to the sequences discovered by cosmology, astronomy, geology, and paleontology.

vesitigial structures

anatomical features which have some significant adaptive function in some forms, but are reduced and non-functional in a related form

Cambrian Explosion (Paleozoic Eon)

animals evolved to developed shells

Age of the Woollies

animals with thick heavy furs. Many show dry land feeding adaptations (high-crowned teeth, etc.), especially in the mammoth steppes. They often had shorter and stockier limbs than their southerly kin, and larger bodies (and thus having a lower surface area/volume ratio, and thus retained heat better.)

Principle of inclusions

any rock fragments included as sediment or xenoliths in a unit are from an older rock unit than the one in which they are included (really, a special case of cross-cutting)

Principle of cross-cutting relationships

any structure (fold, fault, weathering surface, igneous rock intrusion, etc.) which cuts across or otherwise deforms strata is necessarily younger than the rocks and structures it cuts across or deforms

The Great Leap Forward

appearance of: -Finely made tools -Fishing or net-making -Long-distance goods exchange -Decoration (except there may be some Neanderthal beads) -Art (paintings, carvings) -Marked regionalization of culture -Rapid transformation of technologies

Biological Species Concept

array of populations which are actually or potentially interbreeding and which are reproductively isolated from other such arrays under natural conditions

cladogenesis

assumes allopatric (vicariance or peripheral isolate) transformations; branches; marginal pop. shifts into new morphology, but many of the pop. may remain the same

anagenesis

assumes sympatric (in place) transformations; trends; referred to as "pseudoextinctions"; whole pop. shifts into new morphology

Principle of Original Horizontality

b/c strata are deposited under gravity, they form horizontal layers. If the strata are no longer horizontal, something has disturbed the sediments AFTER they become rocks (Steno)

Natural Theology

branch of theology that attempted to understand the nature of the Divine not through revealed wisdom and scripture, but from study of the natural world. It had a long tradition in the West (e.g., medieval bestiaries, where the aspects of different animals were interpreted as moral lessons for Mankind.) Many of the early geologists and paleontologists were natural theologians: Linnaeus and Buckland and Agassiz and Lyell and others.

necrolysis

break up and decay of dead bodies

biostratimony

burial

principle of consilience

choose claim that does not conflict with well-established knowledge

principle of parsimony

choose simplest claim, other things equal

Turning Down the thermostat (Cenozoic)

circum-Antarctica current produced chilling effects; rise of Himalayan Mts. produces excessive erosion scrubbing CO2 out the atmosphere, reducing temps. (last 2.588 Ma= Quarternary Ice Ages)

Conquest of Land (Paleozoic)

colonization of land and freshwater by green plants, arthropods, fungi, vertebrates; first soils; atmospheric O2 increased

Argument

connected series of statements meant to establish a proposition consisting of premises which support the conclusion (empirical evidence)

Recent Out-of-Africa hypothesis

considers all living humans as descending from a relatively recent (perhaps only 50-60 kyr old) ancestral population from Africa, spreading out around the world and displacing the previous local inhabitants. (Again, there is no reason to assume that there wasn't limited intermixing.) This is much more in line with the fossil, archaeological, genetic, and other data, and with basic evolutionary biology.

The observation that the sedimentary rock has to be older than any igneous rock that melted through it is a reflection of the principle of

cross-cutting relationships

Archibald Geikie

demonstrated that there were multiple successions of glacial deposits with non-glacial deposits stratigraphically in between them, containing warm (or at least warmer) climate plant and animal fossils disproving the idea of a single episode of glaciation

Mid-Cretaceous hothouse (mesozoic)

development of circum-Equatorial current --> hi temps., hot/salty water

farming

domesticating wild species of plants and animals to become the primary food source. First in the Fertile Crescent (Mesopotamia and the Near East) around 10 ka, and later spreading to (or independently developed in) other parts of the world, this allowed far greater local populations. The ability to generate a food surplus (especially one that could be stored) allowed for the development of specialist disciplines such as chiefs, soldiers, metallurgists, scribes, and priests. Because of the development of writing we can actually read the thoughts and ideas of these peoples, and their own ideas about the world and where it came from.

Cambrian Substrate Revolution (Paleozoic)

ecosystems become complex: first burrowing animals and grazers--> loss of algal mats; first reefs

exaptation

evolution by co-optation of traits previously adapted to other function (limbs exapted from fish fins)

Impact of agriculture

extensification -> intensification: allowed humans to capture more and more of the land's biomass. Also, as agricultural lands expanded, wildlife tended to be displaced, bringing their population down. Furthermore, wild species of animals were domesticated into new forms (aurochs into cattle; boars into pigs; mouflon into sheep; wild goats into goats; wild horses into horses; wild asses into donkeys; etc.): the wild species tended to decline from habitat loss and hunting while the domestic forms flourished under human husbandry.

Hypothesis

formal statement of a pattern that appears to exist in a set of observations

The Omphalos Argument

formulated by Henry Phillip Gosse in 1857, the idea that the Earth was created to LOOK ancient, but is really only 6000 years old. (It's name is from the Greek for "navel": the idea that Adam and Eve were created with navels, even if they were never gestated inside a woman and hence would not have umbilical cords!) This idea requires a trickster God (who wants to make things look ancient, up to and including light from stars and other objects more than 6000 light years away being created in transit.), which doesn't jive well with most standard modern theologies. Furthermore, if God is capable of doing this kind of fakery, what is to say He didn't create the Universe only last Thursday, and all the books, movies, photographs, even your memories, of the past were simply willed into being to appear as it there were a past. Intellectually this is EXACTLY the same argument. (This variation of Omphalos is called, not too creatively, "Last Thursdayism".) As such, you can see why it is really way outside the realm of Science.

Snowball Earth (Proterozoic)

glaciation caused by methane being oxidized lowering temps. AND CO2 get scrubbed out of the atmosphere by chemical weathering

Iron Catastrophe (Hadeon Eon)

heating caused metals to molt forming Earth's core (magnetosphere) Tellus

YEC chronology

how wrong is their chronology? The actual age of the Earth at about 4.557 Gyr, but they claim a mere 6000 yrs. This is exactly proportional to claiming that the distance from Washington, DC to Los Angeles, CA (3690 km, or 2293 mi) is really only 4.86 m (16 feet)!! And in order to do this, one has to reject physics (nuclear decay, the speed of light, and so forth), astronomy, geology, chemistry: indeed, the whole corpus of modern Science.

Archaeological records

human trace fossils

Potential trigger for megafaunal extinction: Disease

hyperdisease? It is very unlikely that any one single disease could cause this scale extinction, but conceivably migrations of multiple species from one region to another might bring multiple diseases.

Epifaunal benthic

immobile polyps growing permanently fixed reefs on sea floor

Quaternary Period

it began at 2.588 Ma with a shift from an Icehouse to an Ice Age world, and the start of the glacial-interglacial cycles. The time between the onset of the glaciation and the most recent deglaciation is the Pleistocene Epoch, and the time of the recent interglacial (including this moment right now, and now, and now...) is the Holocene Epoch. Overall, Quaternary climates are cold by Earth History standards: even the interglacials of the Pleistocene and Holocene are cooler than the preceding Pliocene and Miocene times, much less the Greenhouse world of the Eocene and earlier.

erratics

large boulders out in the open which clearly didn't match any of the local bedrock. These could be up to the size of a house. How did they get there? They didn't roll down a mountainside, since there were not mountains nearby. Even more importantly: study of the lithology (composition) of the various erratics revealed they could be traced to source rocks which were kilometers, tens of kilometers, or even hundreds of kilometers away!

The Sternbergs

mercenaries for museums

mid-mesozoic marine revolution

modern style, moving marines

Neocetes

modern whales, occur during Oligocene coincide with cooling of ocean

Great Ordivician Biodiversity Event (Paleozoic)

more diversity and more complex marine systems

analogous structures

non-homologous structures found in two or more organisms that are adapted for the same function

Permo-Triassic Extinction (Paleozoic)

one of the largest episodes of volcanism in Earth's history -"Mother of All Extinctions" -only 4-12% survivorship at a species level, and given that a species could survive with very few individuals, it was much greater than 96% of individuals lost!) -two phase extinction -The Permo/Triassic fauna wiped out most of the remaining Cambrian fauna, and was noticeably the time the Paleozoic fauna stopped being the dominant assemblage and the Modern fauna took over. -diversity greatly reduced

adaptive radiations

patterns that approach (radiate) from single source to many branches of species

Anthropocene (Human Epoch)

period of time in which human technology has influenced Earth's systems

fossil

physical remains or traces of behaviors of organisms preserved in rock record

Arrival of humans in Alaska

possibly as old as 28 ka, but definitely by 14 ka. Note that during the Last Glacial Maximum the conjoined ice sheets from the Rockies (the Cordillera ice sheet) and eastern Canada (the Laurentide ice sheet) blocked Alaska from the rest of the America. In contrast, though, the low sea level meant that there was a continuous land bridge between Siberia and Alaska: the land of Beringia.

1925 Tennessee passed the Butler Act

prohibiting the teachings of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof

Louis Agassiz and K.F. Schimper

proposed that all of Switzerland and the neighboring region had recently experienced an Eiszeit (an Ice Age) when it had totally been covered by a Greenland-like continental glacier. After hearing from other researchers, and visiting the rest of Europe (and eventually North America), Agassiz went further in his Etudes su les glaciers (1840), proposing that northern and central Europe and northern North America had all been ice covered, and that the Eiszeit had been a global phenomenon. In fact he proposed that the extinction of the Pleistocene mammals like mammoths, woolly rhinos, and the like (which he thought were tropical creatures, not knowing they were hairy) was because of the Ice Age.

proximate vs ultimate cuases

proximate: events that directly brings about the change ultimate: phenomena that sparks the proximate causes. -For example, the proximate cause for the sinking of the Titanic was the flooding of the decks through the hole ripped in its side by the iceberg; the ultimate causes were (among other things) failure to spot the iceberg sufficiently in advance to turn it

Cretaceous terrestrial revolution (mesozoic)

rise and diversification of modern animals, insects, flowering plants

Homologies

same anatomical structures (body parts) are repeated in different organisms

Equal Time

schools had to teach Creationism (i.e., a purely supernatural view of the origin of Earth, Life & Humans) alongside scientific ones

striations and other erosional surfaces

scratches on exposed bedrock, or bedrock polished and shaped as if by sanding. The scratches (striations) and the pattern of erosion always pointed in the same general directions over a broad region.

Garden of Ediacara (Proterozoic)

sea floor covered by simple algal mats

Detrital Sedimentary Rock

sediment (broken fragments of previously existing rock) transported and deposited; where we find fossil

bioturbation

sediment churned up by burrowing

Principle of lateral continuity

sediment extends laterally in all directions until it thins and pinches out or terminates against the edge of a depositional basin (Steno)

co-evolution

selection of one species due to activity of an interactor leads to counter-selection in response of the first species, flowers and pollinators

Kettle lakes

small (~10-100 m across or so) lakes, often rounded, dotting the countryside for great regions. The "Land of 10,000 Lakes" (Minnesota), the "Land of 1000 Lakes" (Finland), and so forth are riddled with these. Not actually kettle lake regions, but associated with this whole set of phenomena, are the Lake District of England and the Finger Lakes of New York State.

ichnology

study of trace fossils

19th century primates

subdivided into the Bimana (humans, the "two-handers") and the Quadrumana (all other primates, the "four-handers" [because of the grasping ability of both the hands and feet]). This usage continued even into the Darwinian era (in fact, Darwin himself used it): the Bimana were then interpreted as evolving from the Quadrumana.

multiregional hypothesis

suggests that the H. sapiens populations of Asia, Africa, and Europe were independantly derived from local populations of H. erectus: Asians from classic H. erectus, Africans from H. ergaster through H. rhodesiensis, and Europeans through H. antecessor to H. heidelbergensis to H. neanderthalensis to H. sapiens. (Note that multiregionalists lump H. erectus, H. ergaster, and H. antecessor into H. erectus, and the others all as "archaic H. sapiens." ---If true, than "H. sapiens" would be polyphyletic! Furthermore, it suggests that the majority of the genetic heritage at each of these regions was established locally nearly 2 million years ago (although admittedly with some intermixing ever since.) For this reason, the multiregional hypothesis is also called the regional continuity hypothesis.

The fact that the oldest strata in a set of layers are found on the bottom of the stack is a reflection of the principle of

superposition

Age of Mammals (Cenozoic)

surviving forms take over ecological niches, rifting of Antarctica from S. America and Australasia shifts the world into icehouse --> grasslands = new biome

Phyletic Gradualism

sympatry dominate anagenesis > cladogenesis evolutionary change is continuos species=arbitrary segments

after a mass extinction

taxa that live close to the sediment-water interface typically recover well, but extend upwards and downwards from it as time goes by.

falsification

testable

The Big 5

the Ordovician/Silurian (O/S, 443.8 Ma)* the Devonian/Carboniferous (D/C, 358.9 Ma)* the Permian/Triassic (P/Tr, 252.2 Ma)* the Triassic/Jurassic (Tr/J, 201.3 Ma) and the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg, 66.0 Ma) *non-era ending

Mysticeti

the baleen whales. Toothless, but instead have mouths filled with baleen, keratinous strips lined with hair-like projections. Baleen whales filter out their food (which is inevitably very small: tiny fish, krill, plankton, etc.) in a variety of different ways Their mandibles (lower jaws) are poorly attached in front, allowing them to greatly expand their jaws Retain a limited sense of smell, and do not use echolocation (although they have complex sound communication) Are large. Even the smallest (Caparea marginata, the pygmy right whale) is much larger than a human, and the largest (Balaenoptera musculus, the blue whale) is by far the largest known animal that evolution has produced.

Cetacea

the clade of whales, also containing animals popularly called "dolphins" and "porpoises" (which are just small whales.) They are the most specialized marine mammals, incapable of moving on land (or even of breathing effectively without being buoyed by water).

Theistic evolution

the idea that everything we see in geologic time and evolutionary history actually happened, but that it was guided by God or some other "Higher Power" for a particular purpose. Although (as we will see) this is not the majority position within the population in the US, it is in fact the most common position held by high school teachers (see links in last lecture). And it is the position supported by (among other mainstream religious groups) many representatives of the Catholic Church. NOTE: despite what many people think, ID proponents do NOT belong here. Theistic evolutionists still accept natural selection or similar mechanisms for driving change through time; however, they think that God basically "stacks the deck" in favor of certain changes. In contrast, ID proponents do not accept natural selection as a mechanism for any significant change.

Gap Theory

the idea that there is a vast gap in time between two verses in Genesis. As commonly formulated, this was between Genesis 1:1 ("In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth") and 1:2 ("And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.") Under Gap theory, all of geologic time and the succession of life on Earth in the past took place between these sentences.

killing agent

the particular aspect of the phenomenon that does the killing. For example, atmospheric dust, carbon dioxide, thermal pulse, etc. (NOTE: a causal agent can produce multiple killing agents.)

killing mechanisms

the physiological change produced by the killing agent. For example, starvation, asphyxiation, starvation, heat load, etc.

Naturalistic/Scientific/Materialist Evolution

the standard scientific model, as taught in this course. Even many theists (believers in a God or gods) can hold this position, which simply states that our explanations for how and what has happened through time are by means of mechanistic phenomena.

Odonteceti

the toothed whales Includes the giant Physeter macrocephalus, or sperm whale; intermediate sized Ziphiidae, or beaked whales, and Orcinus orca, the orca or killer whale; to smaller whales like Monodon monoceras (the narwhal) and Gobicephala (pilot whales); to dolphins and porpoises which are so small people often forget they are whales Have well-developed echolocation (consequently, the only whales to dive very deep hunting for food, or into sediment-rich rivers) Have lost their sense of smell

Icehouse worlds

times when oceanic currents are directed towards the poles -some continental glaciers -greenhouse gas levels low -deep water generated at poles

Greenhouse worlds

times when oceanic currents do not get deflected towards the poles -no continental glaciation -greenhouse gas levels high -if equatorial circulation, deep water generated at equator-->water gets hot--> little O2 or CO2

Arrival of humans in the Americas south of the ice

traditional model was that the oldest presence of humans south of the ice was around 13.5-13 ka, when an "Ice-Free Corridor" through which the Paleo-Indians arrived (somewhere near present day Calgary, Alberta). developed the Clovis tool kit with it's distinctive spearpoint for heavy spears developed to take down very large prey. Afterwards, it was replaced by the Folsom toolkit with thinner spear points for javalins and darts, thrown with atlatls. These were adapted for smaller (bison or smaller) prey. a number of sites have been discovered which put doubt on traditional "Clovis first". Among these are the Manis site in Washington State, where a a hunting point was found in the vertebra of a specimen of Mammut. But if the ice blocked the way, how would these pre-Clovis people arrive? They could have arrived prior to the coalescence of the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets (which might have been as late as 24 ka). Recall that we are "Homo maritimus": it may be that coastal fishers rather than walking hunters were the First Americans. A new model is that coastal fishers moved down the Pacific seacoast south of Beringia beginning 17 ka or so, and reaching as far south as Monte Verde, Chile by 14.6 ka. These populations began to move inland and encountering big game, eventually developing Clovis tools by 13.2 ka. There might have been a second wave of immigration at or just before this time as the Ice-Free Corridor opened up.

taphonomy

transfer of objects from biosphere to lithosphere

Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Max (PETM)

very rapid period of intense global warming that started and stopped almost instantly -LESSON: easier to emit lots of carbon than it is to be resorbed into environment

Triassic-Jurassic Mass Extinction (Mesozoic)

volcanic episode rifting of Central Atlantic, allowed for dinosaurs to radiate -a repeat of the P/Tr on a smaller scale -The final extinction of the conodonts, a major diversity crash in ammonoids (AGAIN!), loss of basically everything but mammals and their immediate closest kin -causal agent here is the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP for short), a major field of volcanics and intrusive igneous rocks associated with the break-up of Pangaea and the formation of the Central Atlantic Ocean basin. It is comparable in scale to the Siberian Traps of the P/Tr in terms of the area covered and volume erupted

Why reject evolution?

wasn't the science itself: it was the perceived implications of a material origin for humanity on the source of morality. They felt that if humans were not divinely created there could be no absolute morality dictated (literally) from On High, and that lacking such any sort of behavior might be condoned. "The Great Demotions" the more learn about the universe, the more insignificant we seem

Hominian evolution

•"Basal homininans" (Sahelanthropus, Orrorin, Ardipithecus) • "Australopithecines" (primitive graciles such as Praeanthropus, Australopithecus, "Aus." sediba; robust Paranthropus; mystery Kenyanthropus) • "Habilines" (H. rudolfensis, H. habilis, H. gautengensis, H. georgicus, H. floresiensis) • "Pithecanthropines" (H. ergaster, H. erectus) • "Advanced Homo" (H. antecessor, H. cepranensis, H. heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis, H. rhodesiensis, H. sapiens)