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a. Catastrophism Earths features accounted for violent large-scale
events that occurred short amount of time
i. Belief system
1. Then: Most of the physical features are caused by
dramatic violent large scale (then)
2. Now: Small-scale relatively calm natural disaster (now)
b. James Hutton features formed by slow, ongoing geologic processes
i. Father of modern geology
ii. Present key to the past
iii. Uniformitarianism (a.k.a. gradualism) theory that Earths
features are attributed to the gradual small scale processes;
massive changes can occur on Earths surface if the
small-scale processes are given enough time
1. Fleshed out by Charles Lyell: published Principles of
Geology (finer detail of uniformitarianism)
2. Gave a real boost to geology and helped sharpen and
make fine the details that geologists encounter
3. Boosted what we know about the Earths history
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5. Unconformities missing rock layers; interfaces
between discontinuous layers of rocks; do not give an
accurate picture of the geologic history
a. Example 1: Great Unconformity of the Grand
Canyon between the sandstone above and the
shale below (under is vertical; shifted rock position
after earthquake)
ii. Fossil succession: how fossils appear on the layers of the rocks
to determine the relativistic age of each
b. Numerical: find the actual age of a rock through radiometric dating
i. History: Becquerel and Rutherford
1. Henri Becquerel 1896
a. Uranium
b. Radioactive decay
c. Emit energetic particles to make new elements
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c. Gamma high-energy photon not see number of
protons and neutrons but it releases a lot of energy
i. Travel through body but not through lead
ii. X-ray of the teeth, gamma ray only teeth but
not body
iii. Gamma ray emitted, nucleus emits gamma
rays (high-energy photons) leaving it into a
lower energy state
iv. Different methods
1. Uranium-Lead dating
a. Uranium-238 which decays to lead 206 (4.7 billion
years)
b. Uranium 235 to lead 207 (704 M years)
c. Start with 2 uranium isotopes lead
i. Different rates = different half lifes
d. Different rates provide different decay clocks, allow
graphs used to check different samples
2. K-Argon dating
a. K-40 Ar-40: 1.3 B
3. Rb-Sr
a. Rubidium-87 to strontium-87: 50B
b. 50 billion years long time, used to date the rocks
on Earth brought back from moon
4. Radiocarbon dating (carbon-14, carbon dating) IF
ORGANIC
a. Method used to determine the age of organic
material by measuring the radioactivity of its
carbon content
b. For those once alive like trees and plants,
determine age of relics
c. Amount of radioactive isotope C-14 is measured
i. C-14 N-14: 5730 years (shorter than
others)
ii. C-14 continuously created due to the
activities in the atmosphere due to action of
cosmic rays hit in the air
1. C-14 + oxygen (intake by organism) =
(released as) carbon dioxide
2. Plants use carbon dioxide: inside
plants, then animals, stops taking in C-
14 if organism dies
3. Decay to N-14 if organism dies, then
starts clock for radiocarbon dating
7. Conditions of Fossil Preservation, Rapid Burial, Hard parts, the
Elements
a. Tinier creatures living alongside larger species
b. Fossil Preservation process by which the remains of an organism
are transformed into rock, or impressions within sedimentary rock
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i. If you see a fossil dinosaur bone not bone but rock in a shape
of bone, minerals in the dinosaurs bones are replaced by other
minerals
ii. After years: BONES ROCKS
iii. Lucky if bones turn fossils
iv. If they die, they decompose immediately. Scavengers and
decomposers eat it
1. Temperature shrunk tissues
2. Rain and sun degrade skins and bones
3. Beetles chew what is left
4. Other animals trample over it
v. SUCCESS OF FOSSIL PRESERVATION: Conditions
1. Rapid burial: Plant or animal is buried in mud, silt or
other protective substances after death
a. Example 1: Underwater safe from other animals
and temperature is constant; covered by
sediments.
b. Some dinosaurs are lucky that they get this, other
ancient creatures are buried in the pit of tar
i. Protected from destructive forces of
terrestrial ecosystem
2. Hard parts (thats why skin is not that known) bones,
teeth, nails, shells, exoskeleton of arthropods, wood,
seeds
a. Body organs, tissues decompose easily before
fossilized
b. Some soft body parts can be fossilized as
natural casts or rock compressions feathers,
footprints and brains, shapes of flowers,
leaves,
c. Hard part, if 3D fossil
3. Case: Skin and hair from mammoths later than
dinosaurs
a. Lived in arctic regions of the world
i. Cold temperature and dry air are more
conducive than warm moist conditions
ii. Fewer scavengers, insects, bacteria that
would accelerate a dead creatures
breakdown
4. Effects of elements:
a. Type of terrain
b. Type of scavengers
c. Local weather
d. Local soil composition
e. Humidity and precipitation of the area
8. Relative Dating with Fossils
a. If two different outcrops are found in different places, follow fossil
succession
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b. William Smith southern England, collected fossils and recognized
which fossils tended to show up in which rock strata; identified rock
layer by the fossils they contained
i. Principle of Fossil Succession: Certain assemblages, or
groups, of animals and plants have lived during certain time
periods over geologic history (example: humans and elephants
because we are part of the same assemblage)
1. Fossil assemblage change over the years and vary from
period to period clear and predictable
a. Use succession of fossil assemblages to
establish the relative ages of rocks
b. Look out for animals not in long period but
short periods so they will show in only one
layer
2. Index fossil fossil representing a plant or animal that
existed for a relatively short duration of time; help
distinguish between rock strata from different time
periods; common widely distributed species that are easy
for scientists to identify
a. Example: scallop shells, amanites, trilabite good
examples
b. How its used for relative dating? Correlate rocks
from different distances, continents, etc. to get
more details
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b. Natural selection agent that determines the differential reproduction
rate; an evolutionary agent which allows certain individuals in a
population to contribute more offspring to the next generation than
others
c. Evolution occurs through the selective pressure for a pre-
existing trait in a population.
d. Used to predict allelic, genotypic, and phenotypic ratios
e. Species living today are descendants of others described as descent
with modification
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i. Used biological change at the molecular level to observe
evolution of organisms
ii. Degree of difference between organisms show difference
in common ancestor
1. How closely related and
2. How long ago did they share the common ancestor
14. Rates of evolution
a. 6.5 million years for new species to develop (fossil records tell us a lot
about the world)
i. 4000 years - quickly
ii. 40 million years slowly
b. Punctuated equilibria long periods of equilibrium (little change)
with abrupt periods of speciation
i. 1 2 ------------------------------------ 2
ii. If changes occur in first 50 000, which is a short period of time,
it might not show up well in population.
iii. Fossil records can be misleading.
c. Genomes accumulate changes at a constant rate use to
compare DNA
d. Homologous genes similar in structure, location, and function
i. When you know rate of change in homologous genes, you can
calculate molecular clock
ii. Example: bat and dolphin more similar than sharks and fish
e. Molecular clock compares number of nucleotide differences against
the dates of evolutionary branch points from fossil records
i. Estimate dates of evolutionary changes
ii. May vary with different f organisms
iii. Calibrated to multiple genes to account for the different rates at
which animals DNA evolve
15. Genetic drift random loss of individuals and the alleles they possess
a. Population bottleneck drastically decrease in size
b. Founder effect: small group leaves to be part of the main population
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d. Allele frequency should not change unless an evolutionary
agent changed it
i. If affected by EA, population has deviated from equilibrium and
the genetic makeup of population is changing.
e. Gene pool: sum of all the alleles in a population
f. Evolutionary agent: any force that alters the genetic structure of a
population
g. Non-random mating: evolutionary agent which alters genotypic
frequency
h. Genetic drift: random loss of individuals and the alleles they posses
i. Population bottleneck: When a population decreases significantly in
size
j. Founder effect: when a small group leaves the main population to
form a new population
b
q=
B+b
18. Natural selection and adaptation
a. Fitness: a measurement of the ability of a trait to increase or decrease
the relative contribution of offspring by an individual to the next
generation; a phenotype which improves fitness of an individual will
improve its viability relative to other individuals in the population
b. Variation within a population provides the genetic variability
for improvements to the population.
c. Adaptation a trait that enhances the reproductive and survival
success of an organis
d. Homologous structure: structure shared between different organism
that came from a common ancestor
e. Analogous trait: a trait similar in appearance or purpose but evolved
independently in the 2 organisms in question
f. Convergent evolution: When selective pressure results in the
independent evolution of similar traits in two or more organisms
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c. Stabilizing selection: selection in which individuals at middle of a
phenotypic spectrum are most fit; birth rate
d. Heterozygote advantage: a case in which the heterozygous
genotypes has a higher relative fitness than either
homozygous genotype
i. Example 1 - Sickle-shape cells: - sickle cell; + malaria
resistance
e. Balance polymorphism: two alleles of a gene maintained in a
population because heterozygotes are more fit than homozygous
counterpart
f. Polymorphism: alternate versions of a trait
20. Speciation
a. Species: an independent evolutionary unit of organisms
i. Member could mate with other members
b. Speciation process by which an ancestor splits into two or more
species
i. Population gene pool must be divided caused by either physical
or biological barrier
c. Allopatric speciation geographic speciation; the dominant one,
when population is separated by physical barrier (allo different; patris
country)
d. Sympatric speciation occurs without physical separation of
members of the population
i. Played role in evolution of plant species
ii. Polyploidy common means; characteristic of a cell or
organism with more than 2 complete sets of
chromosomes
1. Haploid instead of a diploid
2. Mating of haploid and diploid triploid, causes problem
with fertility; hence they are sterile
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vi. Other organisms may also affect speciation (example:
pollinators are picky)
25. TAXONOMY
a. Binomial nomenclature two names to identify organism (by
Carolus Linnaeus)
b. First letter capital
c. Others italicized
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d. Based on morphology and genetics: taxonomy naming and
classifying organisms
i. Domain
1. Bacteria
2. Archaea
3. Eukarya
ii. Kingdom cell type, number, how to get food
1. archaebacteria, prokaryotic, unicellular
2. eubacteria, prokaryotic, unicellular, different genetic
composition than archaebacteria
3. Protista, eukaryotic, unicellular, plant-like and animal-
like
4. Animals, largest
5. Plants,
6. Fungi, eukaryotic, heterotrophic, plant-like but they
cannot make their own food
iii. Phylum
iv. Class
v. Order
vi. Family
vii. Genus
viii. Species
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d. Archaeabacteria extreme environment
i. Thermophiles
ii. Halophiles salt lover
iii. Methanogens carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce
methane
e. Eubacteria decomposition and digestion, usually symbiotic
relationships, responsible for some diseases
i. Killed by antibiotics
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3. Bony fish with skeleton and bone
4. Amphibians first to develop legs
5. Reptiles eggs to be laid out of water
6. Birds
7. Mammals produce milk, fur or hair, efficient respiratory
and circulatory systems, warm-blooded (more than 5000
different species on Earth)
iii. Body cavity
31. Humans
a. Primates mammals with forward-looking eyes, hands and feet
capable of grasping, large brains, complex social behaviors, care for
the young, nails not claws, fingerprints, lived in trees, tails for balance;
mostly quadrupedal
b. Separation
i. Old world Asia, Africa
ii. New world South America
c. Groups
i. Hominoids gibbon, orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo,
human
ii. Long arms, short legs from new world
iii. Humans bipedal primates capable of language, symbolic
thought, and both the creation and use of complex tools; shorter
digestive tract, smaller jaw
iv. Hominins hominoids related to humans dating back 6 to 7
million years ago
v. Australopithecus bipedal with small bite, Lucy
vi. Homo habilis handy man, advanced tools
vii. Homo erectus
viii. Neanderthals evolutionary dead end
ix. Homo sapiens 160 000 195 000 years ago
32. Four major characteristics that drive evolution
a. Natural selection
b. Gene flow
c. Genetic drift
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b. Umbrella species conservation: keystone species concept; conserve
species and you conserve other species
c. Species survival plan population genetics in wild populations; captive
breeding programs
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